Chapter 2
All the boys had appointed Ralph their chief. All were happy with Ralph as their chief. Ralph had to decide the future course of action.
He said “We’re on an island. We’ve been on the mountain top and seen water all round. We saw no houses, no smoke, no footprints, no boats, no people. We’re on an uninhabited island with no other people on it.”
Jack broke in.
“All the same you need an army—for hunting. Hunting pigs—”
“Yes. There are pigs on the island.”
He lifted the shell on his knees and looked round the sun-slashed faces.
“There aren’t any grown-ups. We shall have to look after ourselves.”
Below the other side of the mountain top was a platform of forest.
“Down there we could get as much wood as we want.”
Jack nodded and pulled at his underlip. Starting perhaps a hundred feet below them on the steeper side of the mountain, the patch might have been designed expressly for fuel.
Trees, forced by the damp heat, found too little soil for full growth, fell early and decayed: creepers cradled them, and new saplings searched a way up. Jack turned to the choir, who stood ready. Their black caps of maintenance were slid over one ear like berets.
“We’ll build a pile. Come on.”
They found the likeliest path down and began tugging at the dead wood. And the small boys who had reached the top came sliding too till everyone but Piggy was busy. Most of the wood was so rotten that when they pulled, it broke up into a shower of fragments and woodlice and decay; but some trunks came out in one piece.
The twins, Sam and Eric, were the first to get a likely log but they could do nothing till Ralph, Jack, Simon, Roger and Maurice found room for a hand-hold. Then they inched the grotesque dead thing up the rock and toppled it over on top. Each party of boys added a quota, less or more, and the pile grew. At the return Ralph found himself alone on a limb with Jack and they grinned at each other, sharing this burden.
Once more, amid the breeze, the shouting, the slanting sunlight on the high mountain, was shed that glamour, that strange invisible light of friendship, adventure, and content.
All the friends collected a huge heap of dead wood and gave it fire. Lo and behold! In a few minutes’ time the dead wood being completely dry began to turn into a blaze. The boys felt very elated. They started dancing around the blazing fire.
The trees were so rootles and now so tinger dry that whole limbs yielded passionately to the yellow flames that powered upwards and shook a great beard of flame twenty feet in the air. For yards round the fire the heat was like a blow and the breeze was a river of sparks. Trunks crumbled to white dust. All the boys got scared and worried.
A tree exploded in the fire like a bomb. Tall swathes of creepers rose for a moment into view, agonized, and went down again. The little boys screamed at them.
“Snakes! Snakes! Look at the snakes!”
In the west, and unheeded, the sun lay only an inch or two above the sea. Their faces were lit redly from beneath. Piggy fell against a rock and clutched it with both hands.
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