William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" Chapters 7-12

At first light he would creep into the thicket, squeeze between the twisted stems, ensconce himself so deep that only a crawler like himself could come through, and that crawler would be jabbed.

Presently the white, broken stumps, the split sticks and the tangle of the thicket refocused.

Roger, uncommunicative by nature, said nothing.

Jack, identifiable by personality and red hair, was advancing from the forest A hunter crouched on either side.

There were no shadows under the trees but everywhere a pearly stillness, so that what was real seemed illusive and without definition.

They made their way to the devastated fruit trees.

His stomach protruded and the water dried on it Ralph squirted up at the sky.

Ralph noticed a rapid and infuriating tapping noise and realized that Roger was banging his silly wooden stick against something.

Robert stabilized the thing in a phrase which was received uproariously.

Vividly they came before him; he could have reached up and touched them, could feel the weight and slow slide with which The Mammoth Book for Boys would come out and slither down.

Then they lay quiet, panting, listening to Robert's frightened snivels.

An oblong of blackness relieved with brilliant spangles hung before them and there was the hollow sound of surf on the reef.

They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned.

Some of the littluns started a ring on their own; and the complementary circles went round and round as though repetition would achieve safety of itself.

Demoniac figures with faces of white and red and green rushed out howling, so that the littluns fled screaming.

From his left hand dangled Piggy's broken glasses.

Jack slid away from him, Roger bumped, fumbled with a hiss of breath, and passed onwards.

A flame, seemingly detached, swung like an acrobat and licked up the palm heads on the platfonn.

"I don't remember this cliff," said Jack, crestfallen, "so this must be the bit of the coast I missed."

There may be a ship out there-"
He paused, defeated by the silence and the painted anonymity of the group guarding the entry.

The boys with the spit gave Ralph and Piggy each a succulent chunk.

Not scared so much as paralyzed; hung up here immovable on the top of a diminishing, moving mountain.

One piglet, with a demented shriek, rushed into the sea trailing Roger's spear behind it.

The humiliating tears were running from the comer of each eye.

Robert stabilized the thing in a phrase which was received uproariously.

Then as the blue material of the parachute collapsed the corpulent figure would bow forward, sighing, and the flies settle once more.

Sitting on the tremendous rocks in the torrid sun, Roger received this news as an illumination.

A fist withdrew and came back like a piston, so that the whole shelter exploded into light Ralph twisted sideways on top of a writhing body and felt hot breath on his cheek He began to pound the mouth below him, using his clenched fist as a hammer;

Jack brought up the rear, displaced and brooding.

In the middle was a blob of dark and the savage wrinkled up his face, trying to decipher the darkness.

The boar's note changed to a squeal and it swerved aside into the covert.

He ceased to work at his tooth and sat still, assimilating the possibilities of irresponsible authority.

Vividly he imagined Piggy by himself, huddled in a shelter that was silent except for the sounds of nightmare.

To carry he must speak louder; and this would rouse those striped and inimical creatures from their feasting by the fire.

Then there was a creature bounding along the pig track toward him, with tusks gleaming and an intimidating grunt.

He rubbed his cheek along his forearm, smelling the acrid scent of salt and sweat and the staleness of dirt.

The tribe must be sitting round the gutted pig, watching the fat ooze and burn among the ashes.

On the mountain-top the parachute filled and moved; the figure slid, rose to its feet, spun, swayed down through a vastness of wet air and trod with ungainly feet the tops of the high trees; falling, still falling, it sank toward the beach and the

The usual brightness was gone from his eyes and he walked with a sort of glum determination like an old man.

With the boar only five yards away, he flung the foolish wooden stick that he carried, saw it hit the great snout and hang there for a moment.

He tried to formulate.

So they sat, the rocking, tapping, impervious Roger and Ralph, fuming; round them the close sky was loaded with stars, save where the mountain punched up a hole of blackness.

There he would sit, and the search would pass him by, and the cordon waver on, ululating along the island, and he would be free.

Jack glowered.

The boys began to babble.

There was only one other rock up there that they might conceivably move; but that was half as big as a cottage, big as a car, a tank.

There came the sound of boys scuttling away.

Other boys were appearing now, tiny tots some of them, brown, with the distended bellies of small savages.

Then the shelter collapsed with smothering finality; and the anonymous shapes fought their way out and through.

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.

Ralph surprised himself, not so much by the quality of his voice, which was even, but by the bravado of its intention.

A steady current of heated air rose all day from the mountain and was thrust to ten thousand feet; revolving masses of gas piled up the static until the air was ready to explode.

The pigs lay, bloated bags of fat, sensuously enjoying the shadows under the trees.

Each of them wore the remains of a black cap and ages ago they had stood in two demure rows and their voices had been the song of angels.

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.

A taboo was evolving round that word too.

By him stood Piggy still holding out the talisman, the fragile, shining beauty of the shell.

He wiped his face with a dirty arm, and made an effort to retrieve his status.

At last the immediacy of the kill subsided.

He paused, sun-flecked, holding up a bough, prepared to duck under it A spasm of terror set him shaking and he cried aloud.

They met with a jolt and bounced apart.

They came to the fiat top where the rock was hard to hands and knees.

The filmy enchantments of mirage could not endure the cold ocean water and the horizon was hard, clipped blue.

By common consent they were using the spears as sabers now, no longer daring the lethal points.

In the succession of houses that Ralph had known, this one stood out with particular clarity because after that house he had been sent away to school.

The storm of sound beat at them, an incantation of hatred.

"But the-"
They were regarding him gravely, not yet troubled by any doubts about his sufficiency.

The disc of the sun was dull silver as though it were nearer and not so hot, yet the air stifled.

The newly beaten and untied Wilfred was sniffing noisily in the background.

He would like to have a bath, a proper wallow with soap.

Jack had backed right against the tribe and they were a solid mass of menace that bristled with spears.

The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations.

The light was unearthly.

Then there was a creature bounding along the pig track toward him, with tusks gleaming and an intimidating grunt.

There was no help in them and he looked away, confused and sweating.

Then the silence intruded even there and Jack turned where he sat For a time he looked at them and the crackle of the fire was the loudest noise over the droning of the reef, Ralph looked away; and Sam, thinking that Ralph had turned to him accusin

They would be savoring food and the comfort of safety.

There was another noise to attend to now, a deep grumbling noise, as though the forest itself were angry with him, a somber noise across which the ululations were scribbled excruciatingly as on slate.

In the silence, and standing over the dry blood, they looked suddenly furtive.

Birds were screaming, mice shrieking, and a little hopping thing came under the mat and cowered.

Not one of them was an obvious subject for a shower, and yet-hair, much too long, tangled here and there, knotted round a dead leaf or a twig; faces cleaned fairly well by the process of eating and sweating but marked in the less accessible angles with a

A steady current of heated air rose all day from the mountain and was thrust to ten thousand feet; revolving masses of gas piled up the static until the air was ready to explode.

Ralph grimaced.

The hunters were looking uneasily at the sky, flinching from the stroke of the drops.

The twins, puzzled, looked at each Other; while Piggy, reassured by the cessation of violence, stood up carefully.

Henry brought him a shell and he drank, watching Piggy and Ralph over the jagged rim..

Jack's parry."

The afternoon wore on, hazy and dreadful with damp heat; the sow staggered her way ahead of them, bleeding and mad, and the hunters followed, wedded to her in lust, excited by the long chase and the dropped blood.

He pointed past them to where the trickle of smoke dispersed in the pearly air.

After that the rocks seemed to be growing impassable so they sat for a time, letting their rags dry and watching the clipped outlines of the rollers that moved so slowly past the island.

Roger ran round the heap, prodding with his spear whenever pigflesh appeared.

Piggy once more was the center of social derision so that everyone felt cheerful and normal.

He giggled and flicked them while the boys laughed at his reeking palms.

Ralph edged forward, feeling his way over the uneven surface as though he were bund.

Any savage balked in the forest would utter the double shout and hold up the line till he was free again.

The sky and the mountain were at an immense distance, shimmering in the heat; and the reef was lifted by mirage, floating in a land of silver pool halfway up the sky.

We'll be stumbling about."

He opened his eyes quickly and there was the head grinning amusedly in the strange daylight, ignoring the flies, the spilled guts, even ignoring the indignity of being spiked on a stick.

The word was too good, too bitter, too successfully daunting to be repeated.

Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife.

Vividly they came before him; he could have reached up and touched them, could feel the weight and slow slide with which The Mammoth Book for Boys would come out and slither down.

He giggled and flicked them while the boys laughed at his reeking palms.

Now the sea would suck down, making cascades and waterfalls of retreating water, would sink past the rocks and plaster down the seaweed like shining hair: then, pausing, gather and rise with a roar, irresistibly swelling over point and outcrop, cli

The night was cool and purged of immediate terror.

"Through here, I said-"
The boar was floundering away from them.

Not scared so much as paralyzed; hung up here immovable on the top of a diminishing, moving mountain.

There was the neck of land, the ledge skirting the rock, up there were the red pinnacles.

They went more slowly than Ralph had bargained for; yet in a way he was glad to loiter, cradling his spear.

For a while there was the continual creak and rustle of leaves as they tried for comfort.

He could not bring himself to be specific at first; but then fear and loneliness goaded him.

For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter.

He numbered them through his fringe, glimpsed the ineffectual smoke.

A buffet of wind made him stagger and he saw that he was out in the open, on rock, under a brassy sky.

Down here, almost on a level with the sea, you could follow with your eye the ceaseless, bulging passage of the deep sea waves.

The twins, puzzled, looked at each Other; while Piggy, reassured by the cessation of violence, stood up carefully.

The green light and the glossy patches of sunshine played over their befouled bodies.

Then the silence intruded even there and Jack turned where he sat For a time he looked at them and the crackle of the fire was the loudest noise over the droning of the reef, Ralph looked away; and Sam, thinking that Ralph had turned to him accusin

Maurice and Robert skewered the carcass, lifted the dead weight, and stood ready.

High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever.

Ralph sighed, sensing the rising antagonism, understanding that this was how Jack felt as soon as he ceased to lead.

On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean, the miles of division, one was clamped down, one was helple

He remembered his age-old tremors in the forest.

Up there, for once, were clouds, great bulging towers that sprouted away over the island, grey and cream and copper-colored.

Jack's voice went on, tremulous yet determined, pushing against the uncooperative silence.

Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and trickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island.

A great noise as of sea gulls rose behind him.

If Jack was astonished by their fervor he did not show it.

For most of the way they were forced right down to the bare rock by the water and had to edge along between that and the dark luxuriance of the forest There were little cliffs to be scaled, some to be used as paths, lengthy traverses where one used

The densest tangle on the island, a mass of twisted stems, black and green and impenetrable, lay on their left and tall grass swayed before them.

There was no sign left of the storm, and the beach was swept clean like a blade that has been scoured.

Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out toward the open sea.

A star appeared behind them and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.

The coarse grass was still worn away where the assembly used to sit; the fragile white conch still gleamed by the polished seat Ralph sat down in the grass facing the chiefs seat and the conch.

She was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.

If you could shut your ears to the slow suck down of the sea and boil of the return, if you could forget how dun and unvisited were the ferny coverts on either side, then there was a chance that you might put the beast out of mind and dream for a w

Attention focused on Jack.

The chief led them, trotting steadily, exulting in his achievement He was a chief now in truth; and he made stabbing motions with his spear.

Here and there they could clamber over wave-wet rock, leaping across clear pools that the tide had left.

Jack held up the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth.

Jack, who had said nothing, began to choke and cough, and a gust of wind set all three spluttering.

A half-sound of jeering ran round the circle and Simon shrank from it.

Ralph moved, bent down, kept a wary eye on Jack.

He would like to have a pair of scissors and cut this hair-he flung the mass back-cut this filthy hair right back to half an inch.

Simon's mouth labored, brought forth audible words.

A great clamor rose among the savages.

Piggy gave up the attempt to rebuke Ralph.

Not one of them was an obvious subject for a shower, and yet-hair, much too long, tangled here and there, knotted round a dead leaf or a twig; faces cleaned fairly well by the process of eating and sweating but marked in the less accessible angles

Jack and the two anonymous savages with him swayed, looking up, and then recovered.

Jack wrenched free and swung at Ralph with his spear.

Grey, feathery ashes scurried hither and thither at his breath but no spark shone among them The twins watched anxiously and Piggy sat expressionless behind the luminous wall of his myopia.

The conch glimmered among the trees, a white blob against the place where the sun would rise.

Dark figures drew themselves out of the wreckage and flitted away, till the screams of the littluns and Piggy's gasps were once more audible.

The pig-run filled with shouting boys again, Jack came running back, and poked about in the undergrowth.

She was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.

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.

Colors drained from water and trees and pink surfaces of rock, and the white and brown clouds brooded, Nothing prospered but the flies who blackened their lord and made the spilt guts look like a heap of glistening coal Even when the vessel broke i

The branch crackled, the leaves curled and the yellow smoke expanded.

Before them, something like a great ape was sitting asleep with its head between its knees.

He came now out of the coconut trees, limping, dirty, with dead leaves hanging from his shock of yellow hair.

They went more slowly than Ralph had bargained for; yet in a way he was glad to loiter, cradling his spear.

Ralph was puzzled and searched Simon's face for a clue.

It took Ralph at low water when his nerve was relaxed for the return to the shelter and the still, friendly waters of the lagoon.

The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her.

Now the sea would suck down, making cascades and waterfalls of retreating water, would sink past the rocks and plaster down the seaweed like shining hair: then, pausing, gather and rise with a roar, irresistibly swelling over point and outcrop, climbing t

A stain in the darkness, a stain that was Jack, detached itself and began to draw away.

"All right then," he said in tones of deep meaning, and menace, all right."

Then he was crashing through foliage and small boughs and was hidden by the forest.

Then the supreme sting, the casual, bitter, word.

The boys on the neck stood in a pool of their own shadow, diminished to shaggy heads.