Lord of the Flies | Page 8

faded slowly from his cheeks. He went back to the platform.

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QuitThe three boys walked briskly on the sand. The tide was low and
there was a strip of weed-strewn beach that was almost as rm as a road.
A kind of glamour was spread over them and the scene and they were
conscious of the glamour and made happy by it. They turned to each
other, laughing excitedly, talking, not listening. The air was bright. Ralph,
faced by the task of translating all this into an explanation, stood on his
head and fell over. When they had done laughing, Simon stroked Ralph's
arm shyly; and they had to laugh again.
“Come on,” said Jack presently, “we're explorers.”
“We'll go to the end of the island,” said Ralph, “and look round the
corner.”
“If it is an island—”
Now, toward the end of the afternoon, the mirages were settling a little.
They found the end of the island, quite distinct, and not magicked out of
shape or sense. There was a jumble of the usual squareness, with one
great block sitting out in the lagoon. Sea birds were nesting there.
“Like icing,” said Ralph, “on a pink cake.”
“We shan't see round this corner,” said Jack, “because there isn't one.
Only a slow curve—and you can see, the rocks get worse—” Ralph shaded
his eyes and followed the jagged outline of the crags up toward the moun-
tain. This part of the beach was nearer the mountain than any other that
they had seen.
“We'll try climbing the mountain from here,” he said. “I should think

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Quitthis is the easiest way. There's less of that jungly stuff; and more pink
rock. Come on.”
The three boys began to scramble up. Some unknown force had wrenched
and shattered these cubes so that they lay askew, often piled diminish-
ingly on each other. The most usual feature of the rock was a pink
cliff surmounted by a skewed block; and that again surmounted, and
that again, till the pinkness became a stack of balanced rock projecting
through the looped fantasy of the forest creepers. Where the pink cliffs
rose out of the ground there were often narrow tracks winding upwards.
They could edge along them, deep in the plant world, their faces to the
rock.
“What made this track?”
Jack paused, wiping the sweat from his face. Ralph stood by him,
breathless.
“Men?”
Jack shook his head.
“Animals.”
Ralph peered into the darkness under the trees. The forest minutely
vibrated.
“Come on.”
The difculty was not the steep ascent round the shoulders of rock,
but the occasional plunges through the undergrowth to get to the next
path. Here the roots and stems of creepers were in such tangles that the

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Quitboys had to thread through them like pliant needles. Their only guide,
apart from the brown ground and occasional ashes of light through the
foliage, was the tendency of slope: whether this hole, laced as it was with
the cables of creeper, stood higher than that.
Somehow, they moved up.
Immured in these tangles, at perhaps their most difcult moment,
Ralph turned with shining eyes to the others.
“Wacco.”
“Wizard.”
“Smashing.”
The cause of their pleasure was not obvious. All three were hot, dirty
and exhausted. Ralph was badly scratched. The creepers were as thick
as their thighs and left little but tunnels for further penetration. Ralph
shouted experimentally and they listened to the muted echoes.
“This is real exploring,” said Jack. “I bet nobody's been here before.”
“We ought to draw a map,” said Ralph, “only we haven't any paper.”
“We could make scratches on bark,” said Simon, “and rub black stuff
in.”
Again came the solemn communion of shining eyes in the gloom.
“Wacco.”
“Wizard.”
There was no place for standing on one's head. This time Ralph ex-
pressed the intensity of his emotion by pretending to knock Simon down;

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Quitand soon they were a happy, heaving pile in the under-dusk.
When they had fallen apart Ralph spoke rst.
“Got to get on.”
The pink granite of the next cliff was further back from the creepers
and trees so that they could trot up the path. This again led into more
open forest so that they had a glimpse of the spread sea. With openness
came the sun; it dried the sweat that had soaked their clothes in the dark,
damp heat. At last the way to the top looked like a scramble over pink
rock, with no more plunging through darkness. The boys chose their way
through deles and over heaps of sharp stone.
“Look! Look!”
High over this end of the island, the shattered rocks lifted up their
stacks and chimneys. This one, against which Jack leaned, moved with a
grating sound when they pushed.
“Come on—”
But not “Come on” to the top. The assault on the summit must wait
while the three boys accepted this challenge. The rock was as large as a
small motor car.
“Heave!”
Sway back and forth, catch the rhythm.
“Heave!”
Increase the swing of the pendulum, increase, increase, come up and
bear against that point of furthest