Lord of the Flies - William Golding [76]
"Keep away. As far as you can."
"Won't you come with me? Three of us―we'd stand a chance."
After a moment's silence, Sam spoke in a strangled voice.
"You don't know Roger. He's a terror."
"And the chief―they're both―"
"―terrors―"
"―only Roger―"
Both boys froze. Someone was climbing toward them from the tribe.
"He's coming to see if we're keeping watch. Quick, Ralph!"
As he prepared to let himself down the cliff, Ralph snatched at the last possible advantage to be wrung out of this meeting.
"I'll lie up close; in that thicket down there," he whispered, "so keep them away from it. They'll never think to look so close―"
The footsteps were still some distance away.
"Sam―I'm going to be all right, aren't I?"
The twins were silent again.
"Here!" said Sam suddenly. "Take this―"
Ralph felt a chunk of meat pushed against him and grabbed it.
"But what are you going to do when you catch me?"
Silence above. He sounded silly to himself. He lowered himself down the rock.
"What are you going to do―?"
From the top of the towering rock came the incomprehensible reply.
"Roger sharpened a stick at both ends."
Roger sharpened a stick at both ends. Ralph tried to attach a meaning to this but could not. He used all the bad words he could think of in a fit of temper that passed into yawning. How long could you go without sleep? He yearned for a bed and sheets―but the only whiteness here was the slow spilt milk, luminous round the rock forty feet below, where Piggy had fallen. Piggy was everywhere, was on this neck, was become terrible in darkness and death.
If Piggy were to come back now out of the water, with his empty head―Ralph whimpered and yawned like a littlun. The stick in his hand became a crutch on which he reeled.
Then he tensed again. There were voices raised on the top of the Castle Rock. Samneric were arguing with someone. But the ferns and the grass were near. That was the place to be in, hidden, and next to the thicket that would serve for tomorrow's hideout. Here―and his hands touched grass―was a place to be in for the night, not far from the tribe, so that if the horrors of the supernatural emerged one could at least mix with humans for the time being, even if it meant...
What did it mean? A stick sharpened at both ends. What was there in that? They had thrown spears and missed; all but one. Perhaps they would miss next time, too.
He squatted down in the tall grass, remembered the meat that Sam had given him, and began to tear at it ravenously. While he was eating, he heard fresh noises―cries of pain from Samneric, cries of panic, angry voices. What did it mean? Someone besides himself was in trouble, for at least one of the twins was catching it. Then the voices passed away down the rock and he ceased to think of them. He felt with his hands and found cool, delicate fronds backed against the thicket. Here then was the night's lair. At first light he would creep into the thicket, squeeze between the twisted stems, ensconce himself so deep that only a crawler like himself could come through, and that crawler would be jabbed. There he would sit, and the search would pass him by, and the cordon waver on, ululating along the island, and he would be free.
He pulled himself between the ferns, tunneling in. He laid the stick beside him, and huddled himself down in the blackness. One must remember to wake at first light, in order to diddle the savages―and he did not know how quickly sleep came and hurled him down a dark interior slope.
He was awake before his eyes were open, listening to a noise that was near. He opened an eye, found the mold an inch or so from his face and his fingers gripped into it, light filtering between the fronds of fern. He had just time to realize that the age-long nightmares of falling and death were past and that the morning was come, when he heard the sound again. It was an ululation over by the seashore― and now the next savage answered and the next. The cry swept by him across the narrow end of the island from sea to lagoon, like the cry of a flying bird. He took no time to consider