Lord of the Flies | Page 4

the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening
weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.
“Get my clothes,” muttered Ralph. “Along there.”
He trotted through the sand, enduring the sun's enmity, crossed the
platform and found his scattered clothes. To put on a grey shirt once
more was strangely pleasing. Then he climbed the edge of the platform
and sat in the green shade on a convenient trunk. Piggy hauled himself
up, carrying most of his clothes under his arms. Then he sat carefully on
a fallen trunk near the little cliff that fronted the lagoon; and the tangled
reections quivered over him.
Presently he spoke.
“We got to nd the others. We got to do something.”
Ralph said nothing. Here was a coral island. Protected from the sun,
ignoring Piggy's ill-omened talk, he dreamed pleasantly.
Piggy insisted.
“How many of us are there?”
Ralph came forward and stood by Piggy.
“I don't know.”
Here and there, little breezes crept over the polished waters beneath

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Quitthe haze of heat. When these breezes reached the platform the palm
fronds would whisper, so that spots of blurred sunlight slid over their
bodies or moved like bright, winged things in the shade.
Piggy looked up at Ralph. All the shadows on Ralph's face were re-
versed; green above, bright below from the lagoon. A blur of sunlight
was crawling across his hair.
“We got to do something.”
Ralph looked through him. Here at last was the imagined but never
fully realized place leaping into real life. Ralph's lips parted in a delighted
smile and Piggy, taking this smile to himself as a mark of recognition,
laughed with pleasure.
“If it really is an island—”
“What's that?”
Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Some-
thing creamy lay among the ferny weeds.
“A stone.”
“No. A shell.' ' Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement.
“S'right. It's a shell! I seen one like that before. On someone's back
wall. A conch he called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would
come. It's ever so valuable—”
Near to Ralph's elbow a palm sapling leaned out over the lagoon. In-
deed, the weight was already pulling a lump from the poor soil and soon
it would fall. He tore out the stem and began to poke about in the water,

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Quitwhile the brilliant sh icked away on this side and that. Piggy leaned
dangerously.
“Careful! You'll break it—”
“Shut up.”
Ralph spoke absently. The shell was interesting and pretty and a wor-
thy plaything; but the vivid phantoms of his day-dream still interposed
between him and Piggy, who in this context was an irrelevance. The palm
sapling, bending, pushed the shell across the weeds. Ralph used one hand
as a fulcrum and pressed down with the other till the shell rose, dripping,
and Piggy could make a grab.
Now the shell was no longer a thing seen but not to be touched, Ralph
too became excited. Piggy babbled:
“—a conch; ever so expensive. I bet if you wanted to buy one, you'd
have to pay pounds and pounds and pounds—he had it on his garden
wall, and my auntie—”
Ralph took the shell from Piggy and a little water ran down his arm.
In color the shell was deep cream, touched here and there with fading
pink. Between the point, worn away into a little hole, and the pink lips
of the mouth, lay eighteen inches of shell with a slight spiral twist and
covered with a delicate, embossed pattern. Ralph shook sand out of the
deep tube.
“—mooed like a cow, ”he said. “He had some white stones too, an' a
bird cage with a green parrot. He didn't blow the white stones, of course,

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Quitan' he said—”
Piggy paused for breath and stroked the glistening thing that lay in
Ralph's hands.
“Ralph!”
Ralph looked up.
“We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when
they hear us—”
He beamed at Ralph.
“That was what you meant, didn't you? That's why you got the conch
out of the water?”
Ralph pushed back his fair hair.
“How did your friend blow the conch?”
“He kind of spat, ”said Piggy. “My auntie wouldn't let me blow on
account of my asthma. He said you blew from down here.” Piggy laid a
hand on his jutting abdomen. “You try, Ralph. You'll call the others.”
Doubtfully, Ralph laid the small end of the shell against his mouth and
blew. There came a rushing sound from its mouth but nothing more.
Ralph wiped the salt water off his lips and tried again, but the shell re-
mained silent.
“He kind of spat.”
Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a
low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on
squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter.

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Quit“He blew from down here.”
Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm.
Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the
palms, spread through