BNC-COCA/"Lord of the Flies," Vocabulary from Chapters 4-6

The decrease in size, from Ralph down, was gradual; and though there was a dubious region inhabited by Simon and Robert and Maurice, nevertheless no one had any difficulty in recognizing biguns at one end and littluns at the other.

Percival was mouse-colored and had not been very attractive even to his mother; Johnny was well built, with fair hair and a natural belligerence.

In his other life Maurice had received chastisement for filling a younger eye with sand.

With impalpable organs of sense they examined this new field.

Perhaps food had appeared where at the last incursion there had been none; bird droppings, insects perhaps, any of the strewn detritus of landward life.

Like a myriad of tiny teeth in a saw, the transparencies came scavenging over the beach.

He poked about with a bit of stick, that itself was wave-worn and whitened and a vagrant, and tried to control the motions of the scavengers.

Beside the pool his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them.

Of all the boys, he was the most at home there; but today, irked by the mention of rescue, the useless, footling mention of rescue, even the green depths of water and the shattered, golden sun held no balm.

There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled common-sense.

This wind pressed his grey shirt against his chest so that he noticed-in this new mood of comprehension-how the folds were stiff like cardboard, and unpleasant; noticed too how the frayed edges of his shorts were making an uncomfortable, pink area on the front of his thighs.

Ralph felt a kind of affectionate reverence for the conch, even though he had fished the thing out of the lagoon himself.

"I got the conch!" said Piggy indignantly. "Ralph--they ought to shut up, oughtn't they?

The assembly murmured in subdued agreement.

At first he was a silent effigy of sorrow; but then the lamentation rose out of him, loud and sustained as the conch.

In a moment the platform was full of arguing, gesticulating shadows.

Simon felt a perilous necessity to speak; but to speak in assembly was a terrible thing to him.

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.

A shadow fronted him tempestuously.

Percival Wemys Madison, of the Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, lying in the long grass, was living through circumstances in which the incantation of his address was powerless to help him.

An interminable dawn faded the stars out, and at last light, sad and grey, filtered into the shelter.

Piggy, finding himself uncomfortably embroiled, slid the conch to Ralph's knees and sat down.

Then the sleeping leviathan breathed out, the waters rose, the weed streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar.

"One heave," cried Jack, exulting, "and-wheee-!"

Mutinously, the boys fell silent or muttering.