Lord of the Flies | Page 5

the intricacies of the forest and echoed back from
the pink granite of the mountain. Clouds of birds rose from the treetops,
and something squealed and ran in the undergrowth.
Ralph took the shell away from his lips.
“Gosh!”
His ordinary voice sounded like a whisper after the harsh note of the
conch. He laid the conch against his lips, took a deep breath and blew
once more. The note boomed again: and then at his rmer pressure,
the note, uking up an octave, became a strident blare more penetrating
than before. Piggy was shouting something, his face pleased, his glasses
ashing. The birds cried, small animals scuttered. Ralph's breath failed;
the note dropped the octave, became a low dubber, was a rush of air.
The conch was silent, a gleaming tusk; Ralph's face was dark with
breathlessness and the air over the island was full of bird-clamor and
echoes ringing.
“I bet you can hear that for miles.”
Ralph found his breath and blew a series of short blasts.
Piggy exclaimed: “There's one!”
A child had appeared among the palms, about a hundred yards along
the beach. He was a boy of perhaps six years, sturdy and fair, his clothes

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Quittorn, his face covered with a sticky mess of fruit. His trousers had been
lowered for an obvious purpose and had only been pulled back half-way.
He jumped off the palm terrace into the sand and his trousers fell about
his ankles; he stepped out of them and trotted to the platform. Piggy
helped him up. Meanwhile Ralph continued to blow till voices shouted in
the forest. The small boy squatted in front of Ralph, looking up brightly
and vertically. As he received the reassurance of something purposeful
being done he began to look satised, and his only clean digit, a pink
thumb, slid into his mouth.
Piggy leaned down to him.
“What's yer name?”
“Johnny.”
Piggy muttered the name to himself and then shouted it to Ralph, who
was not interested because he was still blowing. His face was dark with
the violent pleasure of making this stupendous noise, and his heart was
making the stretched shirt shake. The shouting in the forest was nearer.
Signs of life were visible now on the beach. The sand, trembling be-
neath the heat haze, concealed many gures in its miles of length; boys
were making their way toward the platform through the hot, dumb sand.
Three small children, no older than Johnny, appeared from startlingly
close at hand, where they had been gorging fruit in the forest. A dark
little boy, not much younger than Piggy, parted a tangle of undergrowth,
walked on to the platform, and smiled cheerfully at everybody. More and

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Quitmore of them came. Taking their cue from the innocent Johnny, they sat
down on the fallen palm trunks and waited. Ralph continued to blow
short, penetrating blasts. Piggy moved among the crowd, asking names
and frowning to remember them. The children gave him the same sim-
ple obedience that they had given to the men with megaphones. Some
were naked and carrying their clothes; others half-naked, or more or less
dressed, in school uniforms, grey, blue, fawn, jacketed, or jerseyed. There
were badges, mottoes even, stripes of color in stockings and pullovers.
Their heads clustered above the trunks in the green shade; heads brown,
fair, black, chestnut, sandy, mouse-colored; heads muttering, whispering,
heads full of eyes that watched Ralph and speculated. Something was
being done.
The children who came along the beach, singly or in twos, leapt into
visibility when they crossed the line from heat haze to nearer sand. Here,
the eye was rst attracted to a black, bat-like creature that danced on
the sand, and only later perceived the body above it. The bat was the
child's shadow, shrunk by the vertical sun to a patch between the hur-
rying feet. Even while he blew, Ralph noticed the last pair of bodies
that reached the platform above a uttering patch of black. The two
boys, bullet-headed and with hair like tow, ung themselves down and
lay grinning and panting at Ralph like dogs. They were twins, and the eye
was shocked and incredulous at such cheery duplication. They breathed
together, they grinned together, they were chunky and vital. They raised

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Quitwet lips at Ralph, for they seemed provided with not quite enough skin,
so that their proles were blurred and their mouths pulled open. Piggy
bent his ashing glasses to them and could be heard between the blasts,
repeating their names.
“Sam, Eric, Sam, Eric.”
Then he got muddled; the twins shook their heads and pointed at each
other and the crowd laughed.
At last Ralph ceased to blow and sat there, the conch trailing from one
hand, his head bowed on his knees. As the echoes died away so did the
laughter, and there was silence.
Within the diamond haze of the beach something dark was fumbling
along. Ralph saw it rst, and watched till the intentness of his gaze drew
all eyes that way. Then the creature stepped from mirage on to clear