Lord of the Flies: Chapter 3 - Huts on the Beach

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

There was only the faintest indication of a trail here; a cracked twig and what might be the impression of one side of a hoof.

There was only the faintest indication of a trail here; a cracked twig and what might be the impression of one side of a hoof.

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

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

The silence of the forest was more oppressive than the heat, and at this hour of the day there was not even the whine of insects.

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.

Jack himself shrank at this cry with a hiss of indrawn breath, and for a minute became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees.

By the trunk of a vast tree that grew pale flowers on its grey bark he checked, closed his eyes, and once more drew in the warm air; and this time his breath came short, there was even a passing pallor in his face, and then the surge of blood again.

By the trunk of a vast tree that grew pale flowers on its grey bark he checked, closed his eyes, and once more drew in the warm air; and this time his breath came short, there was even a passing pallor in his face, and then the surge of blood again.

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

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

He gesticulated, sought for a word.

Then we’d be, you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set.

Jack flushed.

Now the antagonism was audible.

Now the antagonism was audible.

Astonished at the interruption, they looked up at Simon’s serious face.

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

They grinned at each other, remembering the glamour of the first day.

They were silent again: Simon intent, Ralph incredulous and faintly indignant.

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

Ralph gazed bewildered at his rapt face. “—they get up high.

Indignation took away Ralph’s control.

Then, amid the roar of bees in the afternoon sunlight, Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled off the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands.

Tall trunks bore unexpected pale flowers all the way up to the dark canopy where life went on clamorously.

The whole space was walled with dark aromatic bushes, and was a bowl of heat and light.

The deep sea breaking miles away on the reef made an undertone less perceptible than the susurration of the blood.

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