William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" Chapters 1-6

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

Immured in these tangles, at perhaps their most difficult moment, Ralph turned with shining eyes to the others.

He gesticulated widely.

It was clear to the bottom and bright with the efflorescence of tropical weed and coral.

He passed his tongue across dry lips and scanned the uncommunicative forest Then again he stole forward and cast this way and that over the ground.

His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness.

Ralph was already clambering over the first smashed swathes of the scar.

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.

Ralph paddled backwards down the slope, immersed his mouth and blew a jet of water into the air.

Darkness poured out, submerging the ways between the trees tin they were dim and strange as the bottom of the sea.

Jack had stopped whittling.

There lay another of those pieces of pink squareness that underlay the structure of the island.

Ralph used one hand as a fulcrum and pressed down with the other till the shell rose, dripping, and Piggy could make a grab.

The assembly shredded away and became a discursive and random scatter from the palms to the water and away along the beach, beyond night-sight.

There came a pause, a hiatus, the pig continued to scream and the creepers to jerk, and the blade continued to flash at the end of a bony arm.

The assembly, sensing a crisis, was tensely expectant.

Piggy sniveled and Simon shushed him quickly as though he had spoken too loudly in church.

Crass was worn away in front of each trunk but grew tall and untrodden in tile center of the triangle.

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.

There was a speck above the island, a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs.

With impalpable organs of sense they examined this new field.

Within the diamond haze of the beach something dark was fumbling along.

Simon's contrite face appeared in the hole.

Inside was peacock water, rocks and weed showing as in an aquarium; outside was the dark blue of the sea.

He tried to be offhand and not too obviously uninterested, but the fat boy hurried after him.

Some act of God-a typhoon perhaps, or the storm that had accompanied his own arrival-had banked sand inside the lagoon so that there was a long, deep pool in the beach with a high ledge of pink granite at the further end.

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.

The air moved a little faster and became a light wind, so that leeward and windward side were clearly differentiated.

"Treasure Island-"
"Swallows and Amazons-"
"Coral Island-"
Ralph waved the conch.

"We closed in-"
The first blow had paralyzed its hind quarters, so then the circle could close in and beat and beat-
"I cut the pig's throat-"
The twins, still sharing their identical grin, jumped up and ran round each other.

"Jack's voice sounded in bitter mimicry.

The air moved a little faster and became a light wind, so that leeward and windward side were clearly differentiated.

There had grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor.

The littluns began to jabber among themselves, then one stood forward.

Ralph shouted experimentally and they listened to the muted echoes.

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

Here the roots and stems of creepers were in such tangles that the boys had to thread through them like pliant needles.

This was fascinating to Henry.

Here the beach was interrupted abruptly by the square motif of the landscape; a great platform of pink granite thrust up uncompromisingly through forest and terrace and sand and lagoon to make a raised jetty four feet high.

Maurice, who had been standing ready to dive, swayed back on his heels, made a bolt for the platform, then swerved back to the grass under the palms.

There was pushing and pulling and officious cries.

By now they were listening to the tirade.

Piggy saw the smile and misinterpreted it as friendliness.

Then they inched the grotesque dead thing up the rock and toppled it over on top.

The glittering sea rose up, moved apart in planes of blatant impossibility; the coral reef and the few stunted palms that clung to the more elevated parts would float up into the sky, would quiver, be plucked apart, run like raindrops on a wire or be repeated as in an odd succession of mirrors.

Wearily obedient, the choir huddled into line and stood there swaying in the sun.

The children who came along the beach, singly or in twos, leapt into visibility when they crossed the line from heat haze to nearer sand.

The note Doomed again: and then at his firmer pressure, the note, fluking up an octave, became a strident blare more penetrating than before.

He was intimidated by this uniformed superiority and the offhand authority in Merridew's voice.

Some unknown force had wrenched and shattered these cubes so that they lay askew, often piled diminishingly on each other.

None of the boys could have found good reason for this; what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy while the most obvious leader was Jack.

Ralph flushed, looking sideways at Piggy's open admiration, and then the other way at Jack who was smirking and showing that he too knew how to clap.

I said about our meetings and things and then you said shut up-"
His voice lifted into the whine of virtuous recrimination.

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

He was down like a sprinter, his nose only a few inches from the humid earth.

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

But Jack was pointing to the high declivities that led down from the mountain to the flatter part of the island.

Now the forest stirred, roared, flailed.

He amplified.

With that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.

I suppose what's what is whether there are ghosts or not-"
He thought for a moment, formulating the question.

Out of. this face stared two light blue eyes, frustrated now, and turning, or ready to turn, to anger.

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

Piggy babbled:
"-a conch; ever so expensive.

Then he got muddled; the twins shook their heads and pointed at each other and the crowd laughed.

"So long as you don't tell the others-"
Ralph giggled into the sand.

The smaller boys were known now by the generic title of "littluns."

They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate.

Piggy knelt by him, one hand on the great shell, listening and interpreting to the assembly.

The opaque, mad look came into his eyes again.

The bushes were dark evergreen and aromatic and the many buds were waxen green and folded up against the light.

Then the piglet tore loose from the creepers and scurried into the undergrowth.

His face puckered, the tears leapt from his eves, his mouth opened till they could see a square black hole.

He capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.

Ralph had been deceived before now by the specious appearance of depth in a beach pool and he approached this one preparing to be disappointed.

His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.

The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings.

His voice subsided to a mutter.

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.

Jack's face went so white that the freckles showed as clear, brown flecks.

The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water.

Ralph lolled in the water.

Idly looking beyond the fire, he resettled the scattered rocks from their fiat shadows into daylight contours.

Sleep enveloped him like the swathing mirages that were wrestling with the brilliance of the lagoon.

Here was loop of creeper with a tendril pendant from a node.

Any day there may be a ship out there"-he waved his arm at the taut wire of the horizon-"and if we have a signal going they'll come and take us off.

Jack drew up his legs, clasped his knees, and frowned in an effort to attain clarity.

Some unknown force had wrenched and shattered these cubes so that they lay askew, often piled diminishingly on each other.

The pause was only long enough for them to understand what an enormity the downward stroke would be.

Simon, walking in front of Ralph, felt a flicker of incredulity-a beast with claws that scratched, that sat on a mountain-top, that left no tracks and yet was not fast enough to catch Samneric.

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

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.

Beyond falls and cliffs there was a gash visible in the trees; there were the splintered trunks and then the drag, leaving only a fringe of palm between the scar and the sea.

"And I-"
Jack snatched from behind him a sizable sheath-knife and clouted it into a trunk.

He clowned badly, but Percival and the others noticed and sniffed and laughed.

You rub-"
He glanced at Ralph, who blurted out the last confession of incompetence.

The noise of the errant assembly faded up the mountain.

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.

Then, at the apex, the grass was thick again because no one sat there.

The note Doomed again: and then at his firmer pressure, the note, fluking up an octave, became a strident blare more penetrating than before.

Jack nodded, as much for the sake of agreeing as anything, and by tacit consent they left the shelter and went toward the bathing pool.

Here the breeze was fitful and allowed the strings of the parachute to tangle and festoon; and the figure sat, its helmeted head between its knees, held by a complication of lines.

The circle of boys before him bristled with hunting spears.

A great tree, fallen across one comer, leaned against the trees that still stood arid a rapid climber flaunted red and yellow sprays right to the top.

A moment later he was battling with the complex undergrowth that was already engulfing the scar.

"And then," said Jack, "when I've had a bathe and something to eat, I'll just trek over to the other side of the mountain and see if I can see any traces.

Then the wail rose, remote and unearthly, and turned to an inarticulate gibbering.

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.

They waited for an appropriately decent answer.

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.

Eyes shining, mouths open, triumphant, they savored the right of domination.

On either side rocks, cliffs, treetops and a steep slope: forward there, the length of the boat, a tamer descent, tree-clad, with hints of pink: and then the jungly flat of the island, dense green, but drawn at the end to a pink tail There, where the island petered out in water, was another island; a rock, almost detached, standing like a fort, facing them across the green with one bold, pink bastion.

They'll Be up there-they must, when the sun's too hot-"
Ralph gazed bewildered at his rapt face.
"-they get up high.

There was a slight, furtive boy whom no one knew, who kept to himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy.

The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings.

That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum.

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

Jack lifted his head and stared at the inscrutable masses of creeper that lay across the trail.

The dispersed figures had come together on the sand and were a dense black mass that revolved.

He noticed blood on his hands and grimaced distastefully, looked for something on which to clean them, then wiped them on his shorts and laughed.

The two older boys flinched when they heard the shameful syllable.

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.

The fair boy reached out and touched the jagged end of a trunk.

They were twins, and the eye was shocked and incredulous at such cheery duplication.

The glittering sea rose up, moved apart in planes of blatant impossibility; the coral reef and the few stunted palms that clung to the more elevated parts would float up into the sky, would quiver, be plucked apart, run like raindrops on a wire or be repeated as in an odd succession of mirrors.

Two shelters were in position, but shaky.

Ralph looked back at the dispersing smoke on the horizon, then up at the mountain.

He closed his eyes, raised his head and breathed in gently with flared nostrils, assessing the current of warm air for information.

A great tree, fallen across one comer, leaned against the trees that still stood arid a rapid climber flaunted red and yellow sprays right to the top.

Their heads clustered above the trunks in the green shade; heads brown, fair, black, chestnut, sandy, mouse-colored; heads muttering, whispering, heads full of eyes that watched Ralph and speculated.

Jack stood there, streaming with sweat, streaked with brown earth, stained by all the vicissitudes of a day's hunting.

"He kind of spat," said Piggy.

A school of tiny, glittering fish flicked hither and thither.

The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground.

The boys chose their way through defiles and over heaps of sharp stone.

Ralph stood, one hand against a grey trunk, and screwed up his eyes against the shimmering water.

Stumbling about among all those creepers."

Jack started to protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an election by acclaim of Ralph himself.

Beneath the smoke was a dot that might be a funnel.

Just you wait-"
Jack mimicked the whine and scramble.

Side by side they scaled the last height to where the diminishing pile was crowned by the last broken rock.

The great rock loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return, moved through the air, fell, struck, turned over, leapt droning through the air and smashed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest.

Piggy and the parody were so funny that the hunters began to laugh.

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.

Piggy tiptoed to the triangle, his ineffectual protest made, and joined the others.

You cant hunt, you can't sing-"
"I'm chief.

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

We might have gone home-"
This was too bitter for Piggy, who forgot his timidity in the agony of his loss.

Below them, boys were still laboring, though some of the small ones had lost interest and were searching this new forest for fruit.

Ralph moved the lenses back and forth, this way and that, till a glossy white image of the declining sun lay on a piece of rotten wood.

The great rock loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return, moved through the air, fell, struck, turned over, leapt droning through the air and smashed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest.

Toward noon, as the floods of light fell more nearly to the perpendicular, the stark colors of the morning were smoothed in pearl and opalescence; and the heat-as though the impending sun's height gave it momentum- became a blow that they ducked, running to the shade and lying there, perhaps even sleeping.

The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground.

Only when Jack himself roused a gaudy bird from a primitive nest of sticks was the silence shattered and echoes set ringing by a harsh cry that seemed to come out of the abyss of ages.

His face was dark with the violent pleasure of making this stupendous noise, and his heart was making the stretched shirt shake.

The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water.

Now the antagonism was audible.

Strange things happened at midday.

He capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.

Eyes shining, mouths open, triumphant, they savored the right of domination.

He wrested the conch from someone and sat down breathlessly.

Evening was advancing toward the island; the sounds of the bright fantastic birds, the bee-sounds, even the crying of the gulls that were returning to their roosts among the square rocks, were fainter.

On their left was at. impenetrable tangle of creepers and trees.

Those who were aware that a ship had passed the island while the fire was out were subdued by the thought of Ralph's anger; while those, including the littluns who did not know, were impressed by the general air of solemnity.

Instead of remaining and playing, he swam with steady strokes under Simon and crawled out of the other side of the pool to lie there, sleek and streaming like a seal.

I've got to get a barb on this spear!

Then, each time me wind dropped, the lines would slacken and the figure bow forward again, sinking its head between its knees.

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.

"Them fruit," he said, "I expect-"
He put on his glasses, waded away from Ralph, and crouched down among the tangled foliage.

The slope of the bars of honey-colored sunlight decreased; they slid up the bushes, passed over the green candle-like buds, moved up toward tile canopy, and darkness thickened under the trees.

There were badges, mottoes even, stripes of color in stockings and pullovers.

He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.

Yard by yard, puff by puff, the breeze hauled the figure through the blue flowers, over the boulders and red stones, till it lay huddled among the shattered rocks of the mountain-top.

A sound, half-laugh, half-jeer, rose among the seated boys.

The rock of the cliff was split and the top littered with great lumps that seemed to totter.

Now the antagonism was audible.

He gaped at them for a moment, then swayed and sat down.

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.

In the middle of the scar he stood on his head and grinned at the reversed fat boy.

"Them fruit," he said, "I expect-"
He put on his glasses, waded away from Ralph, and crouched down among the tangled foliage.

The most usual feature of the rock was a pink cliff surmounted by a skewed block; and that again surmounted, and that again, till the pinkness became a stack of balanced rock projecting through the looped fantasy of the forest creepers.

Meanwhile Ralph continued to blow till voices shouted in the forest The small boy squatted in front of Ralph, looking up brightly and vertically.

He smeared the sweat from his cheeks and quickly adjusted the spectacles on his nose.

The beach between the palm terrace and the water was a thin stick, endless apparently, for to Ralph's left the perspectives of palm and beach and water drew to a point at infinity; and always, almost visible, was the heat.

The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers glimmering under the light that pricked down from the first stars.

The choir, noticeably less of a group, had discarded their cloaks.

He trotted through the sand, enduring the sun's enmity, crossed the platform and found his scattered clothes.

He tore out the stem and began to poke about in the water, while the brilliant fish flicked away on this side and that.

Beyond falls and cliffs there was a gash visible in the trees; there were the splintered trunks and then the drag, leaving only a fringe of palm between the scar and the sea.

Most of the wood was so rotten that when they pulled it broke up into a shower of fragments and woodlice and decay; but some trunks came out in one piece.

Sleep enveloped him like the swathing mirages that were wrestling with the brilliance of the lagoon.

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.

An expression of pain and inward concentration altered the pale contours of his face.