Lord of the Flies: Chapter 1 - The Sound of the Shell

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.

Within the irregular arc of coral the lagoon was still as a mountain lake—blue of all shades and shadowy green and purple.

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

Their only guide, apart from the brown ground and occasional flashes of light through the foliage, was the tendency of slope: whether this hole, laced as it was with the cables of creeper, stood higher than that.

Within the irregular arc of coral the lagoon was still as a mountain lake—blue of all shades and shadowy green and purple.

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 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.

He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood and not yet old enough for adolescence to have made him awkward.

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.

There was not enough soil for them to grow to any height and when they reached perhaps twenty feet they fell and dried, forming a criss-cross pattern of trunks, very convenient to sit on.

Presently he was palely and fatly naked.

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

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

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

Piggy muttered the name to himself and then shouted it to Ralph, who was not interested because he was still blowing.

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 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.

Immediately the thing sounded.

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

The creature was a party of boys, marching approximately in step in two parallel lines and dressed in strangely eccentric clothing.

The creature was a party of boys, marching approximately in step in two parallel lines and dressed in strangely eccentric clothing.

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

Even the choir applauded; and the freckles on Jack’s face disappeared under a blush of mortification.

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.

Where the pink cliffs rose out of the ground there were often narrow tracks winding upwards.

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.

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.

“Green candles,” said Jack contemptuously.

He looked round fiercely, daring them to contradict.