We got to do something.
Ralph looked through him. Here at last was the imagined but never fully realized place leaping into real life. Ralphs 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
Whats that?
Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds.
A stone.
No. A shell.
Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement.
Sright. Its a shell! I seen one like that before. On someones back wall. A conch he called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would come. Its ever so valuable
Near to Ralphs elbow a palm sapling leaned out over the lagoon. Indeed, 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, while the brilliant fish flicked away on this side and that.
Piggy leaned dangerously.
Careful! Youll break it
Shut up.
Ralph spoke absently. The shell was interesting and pretty and a worthy 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, youd have to pay pounds and pounds and poundshe 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 didnt blow the white stones, of course, an he said
Piggy paused for breath and stroked the glistening thing that lay in Ralphs hands.
Ralph!
Ralph looked up.
We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. Theyll come when they hear us He beamed at Ralph. That was what you meant, didnt you? Thats 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 wouldnt let me blow on account of my asthma[4]. He said you blew from down here. Piggy laid a hand on his jutting abdomen. You try, Ralph. Youll 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 remained 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.
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 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 firmer pressure, the note, fluking up an octave, became a strident blare more penetrating than before. Piggy was shouting something, his face pleased, his glasses flashing. The birds cried, small animals scuttered. Ralphs breath failed; the note dropped the octave, became a low wubber, was a rush of air.
The conch was silent, a gleaming tusk; Ralphs 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: Theres 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 torn, 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 satisfied, and his only clean digit, a pink thumb, slid into his mouth.
Piggy leaned down to him.
Whats 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 beneath the heat haze, concealed many figures 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 more 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 simple 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[5] when they crossed the line from heat haze to nearer sand. Here, the eye was first attracted to a black, bat-like creature that danced on the sand, and only later perceived the body above it. The bat was the childs shadow, shrunk by the vertical sun to a patch between the hurrying feet. Even while he blew, Ralph noticed the last pair of bodies that reached the platform above a fluttering patch of black. The two boys, bullet-headed and with hair like tow, flung 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 wet lips at Ralph, for they seemed provided with not quite enough skin, so that their profiles were blurred and their mouths pulled open. Piggy bent his flashing 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 first, and watched till the intentness of his gaze drew all eyes that way. Then the creature stepped from mirage on to clear sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing. The creature was a party of boys, marching approximately in step in two parallel lines and dressed in strangely eccentric clothing. Shorts, shirts, and different garments they carried in their hands; but each boy wore a square black cap with a silver badge on it. Their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black cloaks which bore a long silver cross on the left breast and each neck was finished off with a hambone frill. The heat of the tropics, the descent, the search for food, and now this sweaty march along the blazing beach had given them the complexions of newly washed plums. The boy who controlled them was dressed in the same way though his cap badge was golden. When his party was about ten yards from the platform he shouted an order and they halted, gasping, sweating, swaying in the fierce light. The boy himself came forward, vaulted on to the platform with his cloak flying, and peered into what to him was almost complete darkness.
Wheres the man with the trumpet?
Ralph, sensing his sun-blindness, answered him.
Theres no man with a trumpet. Only me.
The boy came close and peered down at Ralph, screwing up his face as he did so. What he saw of the fair-haired boy with the creamy shell on his knees did not seem to satisfy him.
He turned quickly, his black cloak circling.
Isnt there a ship, then?
Inside the floating cloak he was tall, thin, and bony; and his hair was red beneath the black cap. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness. Out of this face stared two light blue eyes, frustrated now, and turning, or ready to turn, to anger.
Isnt there a man here?
Ralph spoke to his back.
No. Were having a meeting. Come and join in.
The group of cloaked boys began to scatter from close line. The tall boy shouted at them.
Choir! Stand still!
Wearily obedient, the choir huddled into line and stood there swaying in the sun. None the less, some began to protest faintly.
But, Merridew. Please, Merridew cant we?
Then one of the boys flopped on his face in the sand and the line broke up. They heaved the fallen boy to the platform and let him lie. Merridew, his eyes staring, made the best of a bad job.
All right then. Sit down. Let him alone.
But Merridew.
Hes always throwing a faint[6], said Merridew. He did in Gib.; and Addis; and at matins over the precentor.
This last piece of shop brought sniggers from the choir, who perched like black birds on the criss-cross trunks and examined Ralph with interest. Piggy asked no names. He was intimidated by this uniformed superiority and the offhand authority in Merridews voice. He shrank to the other side of Ralph and busied himself with his glasses.
Merridew turned to Ralph.
Arent there any grownups?
No.
Merridew sat down on a trunk and looked round the circle.
Then well have to look after ourselves.
Secure on the other side of Ralph, Piggy spoke timidly.
Thats why Ralph made a meeting. So as we can decide what to do. Weve heard names. Thats Johnny. Those twotheyre twins, Sam n Eric. Which is Eric? You? No youre Sam
Im Sam
n Im Eric.
Wed better all have names, said Ralph, so Im Ralph.
We got most names, said Piggy. Got em just now.
Kids names, said Merridew. Why should I be Jack? Im Merridew.
Ralph turned to him quickly. This was the voice of one who knew his own mind.
Then, went on Piggy, that boyI forget
Youre talking too much, said Jack Merridew. Shut up, Fatty.
Laughter arose.
Hes not Fatty, cried Ralph, his real names Piggy!
Piggy!
Piggy!
Oh, Piggy!
A storm of laughter arose and even the tiniest child joined in. For the moment the boys were a closed circuit of sympathy with Piggy outside: he went very pink, bowed his head and cleaned his glasses again.
Finally the laughter died away and the naming continued. There was Maurice, next in size among the choir boys to Jack, but broad and grinning all the time. There was a slight, furtive boy whom no one knew, who kept to himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy. He muttered that his name was Roger and was silent again. Bill, Robert, Harold, Henry; the choir boy who had fainted sat up against a palm trunk, smiled pallidly at Ralph and said that his name was Simon.
Jack spoke.
Weve got to decide about being rescued.
There was a buzz. One of the small boys, Henry, said that he wanted to go home.
Shut up, said Ralph absently. He lifted the conch. Seems to me we ought to have a chief to decide things.
A chief! A chief!
I ought to be chief, said Jack with simple arrogance, because Im chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp.
Another buzz.
Well then, said Jack, I
He hesitated. The dark boy, Roger, stirred at last and spoke up.
Lets have a vote.
Yes!
Vote for chief!
Lets vote
This toy of voting was almost as pleasing as the conch. Jack started to protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an election by acclaim of Ralph himself. None of the boys could have found good reason for this; what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy while the most obvious leader was Jack. But there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart.
Him with the shell.
Ralph! Ralph!
Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing.
Ralph raised a hand for silence.
All right. Who wants Jack for chief?
With dreary obedience the choir raised their hands.
Who wants me?
Every hand outside the choir except Piggys was raised immediately. Then Piggy, too, raised his hand grudgingly into the air.
Ralph counted.
Im chief then.
The circle of boys broke into applause. Even the choir applauded; and the freckles on Jacks face disappeared under a blush of mortification. He started up, then changed his mind and sat down again while the air rang. Ralph looked at him, eager to offer something.
The choir belongs to you, of course.
They could be the army
Or hunters
They could be
The suffusion drained away from Jacks face. Ralph waved again for silence.
Jacks in charge of the choir. They can bewhat do you want them to be?
Hunters.
Jack and Ralph smiled at each other with shy liking. The rest began to talk eagerly. Jack stood up.
All right, choir. Take off your togs.