'Not them. Didn't you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They're all dead.'
Ralph pulled himself out of the water, stood facing Piggy, and considered this unusual problem.
Piggy persisted.
'This an island, isn't it?'
'I climbed a rock,' said Ralph slowly, 'and I think this is an island.'
'They're all dead,' said Piggy, 'an' this is an island. Nobody don't know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don't know-'
His lips quivered and the spectacles were dimmed with mist.
'We may stay here till we die.'
With that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.
'Get my clothes,' muttered Ralph. 'Along there.'
He trotted through the sand, enduring the sun's enmity, crossed the platform and found his scattered clothes. To put on a grey shirt once more was strangely pleasing. Then he climbed the edge of the platform and sat in the green shade on a convenient trunk. Piggy hauled himself up, carrying most of his clothes under his arms. Then he sat carefully on a fallen trunk near the little cliff that fronted the lagoon; and the tangled reflections quivered over him.
Presently he spoke.
'We got to find the others. We got to do something.'
Ralph said nothing. Here was a coral island. Protected from the sun, ignoring Piggy's ill-omened talk, he dreamed pleasantly.
Piggy insisted.
'How many of us are there?'
Ralph came forward and stood by Piggy.
'I don't know.'
Here and there, little breezes crept over the polished waters beneath the haze of heat. When these breezes reached the platform the palm fronds would whisper, so that spots of blurred sunlight slid over their bodies or moved like bright, winged things in the shade.
Piggy looked up at Ralph. All the shadows on Ralph's face were reversed; green above, bright below from the lagoon. A blur of sunlight was crawling across his hair.
'We got to do something.'
Ralph looked through him. Here at last was the imagined but never fully realized place leaping into real life. Ralph's lips parted in a delighted smile and Piggy, taking this smile to himself as a mark of recognition, laughed with pleasure.
'If it really is an island-'
'What's that?'
Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds.
'A stone.'
'No. A shell.'
Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement.
'S'right. It's a shell! I seen one like that before. On someone's back wall. A conch he called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would come. It's ever so valuable-'
Near to Ralph's elbow a palm sapling leaned out over the lagoon. Indeed, the weight was already pulling a lump from the poor soil and soon it would fall. He tore out the stem and began to poke about in the water, while the brilliant fish flicked away on this side and that. Piggy leaned dangerously.
'Careful! You'll break it-'
'Shut up.'
Ralph spoke absently. The shell was interesting and pretty and a worthy plaything; but the vivid phantoms of his day-dream still interposed between him and Piggy, who in this context was an irrelevance. The palm sapling, bending, pushed the shell across the weeds. Ralph used one hand as a fulcrum and pressed down with the other till the shell rose, dripping, and Piggy could make a grab.
Now the shell was no longer a thing seen but not to be touched, Ralph too became excited. Piggy babbled:
'-a conch; ever so expensive. I bet if you wanted to buy one, you'd have to pay pounds and pounds and pounds-he had it on his garden wall, and my auntie-'
Ralph took the shell from Piggy and a little water ran down his arm. In color the shell was deep cream, touched here and there with fading pink. Between the point, worn away into a little hole, and the pink lips of the mouth, lay eighteen inches of shell with a slight spiral twist and covered with a delicate, embossed pattern. Ralph shook sand out of the deep tube.
'-mooed like a cow,' he said. 'He had some white stones too, an' a bird cage with a green parrot. He didn't blow the white stones, of course, an' he said-'
Piggy paused for breath and stroked the glistening thing that lay in Ralph's hands.
'Ralph!'
Ralph looked up.
'We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when they hear us-'
He beamed at Ralph.
'That was what you meant, didn't you? That's why you got the conch out of the water?'
Ralph pushed back his fair hair.
'How did your friend blow the conch?'
'He kind of spat,' said Piggy. 'My auntie wouldn't let me blow on account of my asthma. He said you blew from down here.' Piggy laid a hand on his jutting abdomen. 'You try, Ralph. You'll call the others.'
Doubtfully, Ralph laid the small end of the shell against his mouth and blew. There came a rushing sound from its mouth but nothing more. Ralph wiped the salt water off his lips and tried again, but the shell remained silent.
'He kind of spat.'
Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter.
'He blew from down here.'
Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm. Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the palms, spread through the intricacies of the forest and echoed back from the pink granite of the mountain. Clouds of birds rose from the treetops, and something squealed and ran in the undergrowth.
Ralph took the shell away from his lips.
'Gosh!'
His ordinary voice sounded like a whisper after the harsh note of the conch. He laid the conch against his lips, took a deep breath and blew once more. The note boomed again: and then at his firmer pressure, the note, fluking up an octave, became a strident blare more penetrating than before. Piggy was shouting something, his face pleased, his glasses flashing. The birds cried, small animals scuttered. Ralph's breath failed; the note dropped the octave, became a low wubber, was a rush of air.
The conch was silent, a gleaming tusk; Ralph's face was dark with breathlessness and the air over the island was full of bird-clamor and echoes ringing.
'I bet you can hear that for miles.'
Ralph found his breath and blew a series of short blasts.
Piggy exclaimed: 'There's one!'
A child had appeared among the palms, about a hundred yards along the beach. He was a boy of perhaps six years, sturdy and fair, his clothes torn, his face covered with a sticky mess of fruit. His trousers had been lowered for an obvious purpose and had only been pulled back half-way. He jumped off the palm terrace into the sand and his trousers fell about his ankles; he stepped out of them and trotted to the platform. Piggy helped him
