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"You tell me," said Piggy anxiously. "Is there a signal?"
Ralph looked back at the dispersing smoke in the horizon, then up at the mountain.
"Ralph--please! Is there a signal?"
Simon put out his hand, timidly, to touch Ralph; but Ralph started to run, splashing
through the shallow end of the bathing pool, across the hot, white sand and under
the palms. A moment later he was battling with the complex undergrowth that was
already engulfing the scar. Simon ran after him, then Maurice. Piggy shouted.
"Ralph! Please--Ralph!"
Then he too started to run, stumbling over Maurice's discarded shorts before he was
across the terrace. Behind the four boys, the smoke moved gently along the horizon;
and on the beach, Henry and Johnny were throwing sand at Percival who was crying
quietly again; and all three were in complete ignorance of the excitement.
By the time Ralph had reached the landward end of the scar he was using precious
breath to swear. He did desperate violence to his naked body among the rasping
creepers so that blood was sliding over him. Just where the steep ascent of the
mountain began, he stopped. Maurice was only a few yards behind him.
"Piggy's specs!" shouted Ralph. "If the fire's all out, we'll need them--"
He stopped shouting and swayed on his feet. Piggy was only just visible, bumbling up
from the beach. Ralph looked at the horizon, then up to the mountain. Was it better
to fetch Piggy's glasses, or would the ship have gone? Or if they climbed on,
supposing the fire was all out, and they had to watch Piggy crawling nearer and the
ship sinking under the horizon? Balanced on a high peak of need, agonized by
indecision, Ralph cried out:
"Oh God, oh God!"
Simon, struggling with the bushes, caught his breath. His face was twisted. Ralph
blundered on, savaging himself, as the wisp of smoke moved on.
The fire was dead. They saw that straight away; saw what they had really known down
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Lord of the Flies
on the beach when the smoke of home had beckoned. The fire was out, smokeless and
dead; the watchers were gone. A pile of unused fuel lay ready.
Ralph turned to the sea. The horizon stretched, impersonal once more, barren of all
but the faintest trace of smoke. Ralph ran stumbling along the rocks, saved himself
on the edge of the pink cliff, and screamed at the ship.
"Come back! Come back!"
He ran backwards and forwards along the cliff, his face always to the sea, and his
voice rose insanely.
"Come back! Come back!"
Simon and Maurice arrived. Ralph looked at them with unwinking eyes. Simon turned
away, smearing the water from his cheeks. Ralph reached inside himself for the worst
word he knew.
"They let the bloody fire go out."
He looked down the unfriendly side of the mountain. Piggy arrived, out of breath and
whimpering like a littlun. Ralph clenched his fist and went very red. The intentness
of his gaze, the bitterness of his voice, pointed for him.
"There they are."
A procession had appeared, far down among the pink stones that lay near the water's
edge. Some of the boys wore black caps but otherwise they were almost naked. They
lifted sticks in the air together whenever they came to an easy patch. They were
chanting, something to do with the bundle that the errant twins carried so
carefully. Ralph picked out Jack easily, even at that distance, tall, red-haired,
and inevitably leading the procession.
Simon looked now, from Ralph to Jack, as he had looked from Ralph to the horizon,
and what he saw seemed to make him afraid. Ralph said nothing more, but waited while
the procession came nearer. The chant was audible but at that distance still
wordless. Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders.
The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins
toiled over the uneven ground. The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed
to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to
them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes.
"_Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood._"
Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the
mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away. Piggy sniveled and Simon
shushed him quickly as though he had spoken too loudly in church.
Jack, his face smeared with clays, reached the top first and hailed Ralph excitedly,
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