'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 corner 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 a 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, we'll 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 remained 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 the 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 we'll 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 lifted 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 logs, 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
