CHAPTER EIGHT - Chapter one

CHAPTER EIGHT
Gift for the Darkness
Piggy looked up miserably from the dawn-pale beach to the dark
mountain. "Are you sure? Really sure, I mean?"
"I told you a dozen times now," said Ralph, "we saw it."
"D'you think we're safe down here?"
"How the hell should I know?"
Ralph jerked away from him and walked a few paces along the
beach. Jack was kneeling and drawing a circular pattern in the sand
with his forefinger. Piggy's voice came to them, hushed.
"Are you sure? Really?"
"Go up and see," said Jack contemptuously, "and good riddance."
"No fear."
"The beast had teeth," said Ralph, "and big black eyes."
He shuddered violently. Piggy took off his one round of glass and
polished the surface.
"What we going to do?"
Ralph turned toward the platform. The conch glimmered
among the trees, a white blob against the place where the sun
would rise. He pushed back his mop.
"I don't know."
He remembered the panic flight down the mountainside.
"I don't think we'd ever fight a thing that size, honestly, you know.
We'd talk but we wouldn't fight a tiger. We’d hide. Even Jack 'ud
hide."
Jack still looked at the sand.
"What about my hunters?"
Simon came stealing out of the shadows by the shelters. Ralph
ignored Jack's question. He pointed to the touch of yellow above the
sea.
"As long as there's light we're brave enough. But then? And now
that thing squats by the fire as though it didn't want us to be rescued—
"
He was twisting his hands now, unconsciously. His voice rose.
"So we can't have a signal fire…We're beaten."
A point of gold appeared above the sea and at once all the sky
lightened.
"What about my hunters?"
"Boys armed with sticks."
Jack got to his feet. His face was red as he marched away. Piggy
put on his one glass and looked at Ralph.
"Now you done it. You been rude about his hunters."
"Oh shut up!"
The sound of the inexpertly blown conch interrupted them. As
though he were serenading the rising sun, Jack went on blowing till
the shelters were astir and the hunters crept to the platform and the
littluns whimpered as now they so frequently did. Ralph rose
obediently, and Piggy, and they went to the platform.
"Talk," said Ralph bitterly, "talk, talk, talk."
He took the conch from Jack.
"This meeting—"
Jack interrupted him.
"I called it."
"If you hadn't called it I should have. You just blew the conch."
"Well, isn't that calling it?"
"Oh, take it! Go on—talk!"
Ralph thrust the conch into Jack's arms and sat down on the
trunk.
"I've called an assembly," said Jack, "because of a lot of things.
First, you know now, we've seen the beast. We crawled up.
We were only a few feet away. The beast sat up and looked at us.
I don't know what it does. We don't even know what it is—"
"The beast comes out of the sea—"
"Out of the dark—"
"Trees—"
"Quiet!" shouted Jack. "You, listen. The beast is sitting up there,
whatever it is-—"
"Perhaps it's waiting—"
"Hunting—"
"Yes, hunting."
"Hunting," said Jack. He remembered his age-old tremors in the
forest.
"Yes. The beast is a hunter. Only— shut up! The next thing is
that we couldn't kill it. And the next thing is that Ralph said my hunters
are no good."
"I never said that!"
"I’ve got the conch. Ralph thinks you're cowards, running away
from the boar and the beast. And that's not all."
There was a kind of sigh on the platform as if everyone knew
what was coming. Jack's voice went on, tremulous yet
determined, pushing against the uncooperative silence.
"He's like Piggy. He says things like Piggy. He isn't a proper
chief."
Jack clutched the conch to him.
"He's a coward himself."
For a moment he paused and then went on.
"On top, when Roger and me went on—he stayed back."
"I went too!"
"After."
The two boys glared at each other through screens of hair.
"I went on too," said Ralph, "then I ran away. So did you."
"Call me a coward then."
Jack turned to the hunters.
He's not a hunter. He'd never have got us meat He isn't a prefect
and we don't know anything about him. He just gives orders and
expects people to obey for nothing. All this talk—"
"All this talk!" shouted Ralph. "Talk, talk! Who wanted it? Who
called the meeting?"
Jack turned, red in the face, his chin sunk back. He glowered up
under his eyebrows.
"All right then," he said in tones of deep meaning, and menace, all
right."
He held the conch against his chest with one hand and stabbed
the air with his index finger.
"Who thinks Ralph oughtn't to be chief?"
He looked expectantly at the boys ranged round, who had frozen.
Under the palms there was deadly silence.
"Hands up," said Jack strongly, "whoever wants Ralph not to be
chief?"
The silence continued, breathless and heavy and full of shame.
Slowly the red drained from Jack's cheeks, then came back with a
painful rush. He licked his lips and turned his head at an angle, so
that his gaze avoided the embarrassment of linking with another's
eye.
"How many think—"
His voice tailed off. The hands that held the conch shook. He
cleared his throat, and spoke loudly.
"All right then."
He laid the conch with great care in the grass at his feet. The
humiliating tears were running from the comer of each eye.
"I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you."
Most of the boys were looking down now, at the grass or their
feet. Jack cleared his throat again.
"I'm not going to be part of Ralph's lot—"
He looked along the right-hand logs, numbering the hunters that
had been a choir.
"I'm going off by myself. He can catch his own pigs. Anyone who
wants to hunt when I do can come too."
He blundered out of the triangle toward the drop to the white sand.
"Jack!"
Jack turned and looked back at Ralph. For a moment he paused
and then cried out, high-pitched, enraged.
"No!"
He leapt down from the platform and ran along the beach,
paying no heed to the steady fall of his tears; and until he dived into
the forest Ralph watched him.
Piggy was indignant.
"I been talking, Ralph, and you just stood there like—"
Softly, looking at Piggy and not seeing him, Ralph spoke to
himself.
"He’ll come back. When the sun goes down he’ll come." He
looked at the conch in Piggy's hand.
"What?"
"Well there!"
Piggy gave up the attempt to rebuke Ralph. He polished his glass
again and went back to his subject.
"We can do without Jack Merridew. There's others besides him
on this island. But now we really got a beast, though I can't hardly
believe it, well need to stay close to the platform; there’ll be less
need of him and his hunting. So now we can really decide on what's
what."
"There's no help, Piggy. Nothing to be done."
For a while they sat in depressed silence. Then Simon stood up
and took the conch from Piggy, who was so astonished that he
zremained on his feet. Ralph looked up at Simon.
"Simon? What is it this time?"
A half-sound of jeering ran round the circle and Simon shrank
from it.
"I thought there might be something to do. Something we—"
Again die pressure of the assembly took his voice away. He
sought for help and sympathy and chose Piggy. He turned half
toward him, clutching the conch to his brown chest.
"I think we ought to climb the mountain."
The circle shivered with dread. Simon broke off and turned to
Piggy who was looking at him with an expression of derisive
incomprehension.
"What's the good of climbing up to this here beast when Ralph
and the other two couldn’t do nothing?"
Simon whispered his answer.
"What else is there to do?"
His speech made, he allowed Piggy to lift the conch out of his
hands. Then he retired and sat as far away from the others as
possible.
Piggy was speaking now with more assurance and with what, if
the circumstances had- not been so serious, the others would have
recognized as pleasure.
"I said we could all do without a certain person. Now I say we
got to decide on what can be done. And I think I could tell you what
Ralph's going to say next. The most important thing on the island is
the smoke and you can't have no smoke without a fire."
Ralph made a restless movement.
"No go, Piggy. We've got no fire. That thing sits up there—we’ll
have to stay here."
Piggy lifted the conch as though to add power to his next words.
"We got no fire on the mountain. But what's wrong with a fire
down here? A fire could be built on them rocks. On the sand, even.
We'd make smoke just the same."
"That's right!"
"Smoke!"
"By the bathing pool!"
The boys began to babble. Only Piggy could have the intellectual
daring to suggest moving the fire from the mountain.
"So well have the fire down here," said Ralph. He looked about
him. "We can build it just here between the bathing pool and the
platform. Of course—"
He broke off, frowning, thinking the thing out, unconsciously
tugging at the stub of a nail with his teeth.
"Of course the smoke won't show so much, not be seen so far
away. But we needn't go near, near the—"
The others nodded in perfect comprehension. There would be no
need to go near.
"We’ll build the fire now."
The greatest ideas are the simplest Now there was something
to be done they worked with passion. Piggy was so full of delight
and expanding liberty in Jack's departure, so full of pride in his
contribution to the good of society, that he helped to fetch wood. The
wood he fetched was close at hand, a fallen tree on the platform that
they did not need for the assembly, yet to the others the sanctity of
the platform had protected even what was useless there. Then the
twins realized they would have a fire near them as a comfort in the
night and this set a few littluns dancing and clapping hands.
The wood was not so dry as the fuel they had used on the
mountain. Much of it was damply rotten and full of insects that
scurried; logs had to be lined from the soil with care or they
crumbled into sodden powder. More than this, in order to avoid
going deep into the forest the boys worked near at hand on any fallen
wood no matter how tangled with new growth. The skirts of the forest
and the scar were familiar, near the conch and the shelters and
sufficiently friendly in daylight. What they might become in darkness
nobody cared to think. They worked therefore with great energy and
cheerfulness, though as time crept by there was a suggestion of
panic in the energy and hysteria in the cheerfulness. They built a
pyramid of leaves and twigs, branches and togs, on the bare sand
by the platform. For the first time on the island, Piggy himself removed
his one glass, knelt down and focused the sun on tinder. Soon there
was a ceiling of smoke and a bush of yellow flame.
The littluns who had seen few fires since the first catastrophe
became wildly excited. They danced and sang and there was a
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