Gift for the Darkness

Piggy looked up miserably from the dawn-pale beach to the dark mountain.

“Are you sure? Really sure, I mean?”

“I told you a dozen times now,” said Ralph, “we saw it.”

“D’you think we’re safe down here?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Ralph jerked away from him and walked a few paces along the beach. Jack was kneeling and drawing a circular pattern in the sand with his forefinger. Piggy’s voice came to them, hushed.

“Are you sure? Really?”

“Go up and see,” said Jack contemptuously, “and good riddance.”

“No fear.”

“The beast had teeth,” said Ralph, “and big black eyes.”

He shuddered violently. Piggy took off his one round of glass and polished the surface.

“What we going to do?”

Ralph turned towards the platform. The conch glimmered among the trees, a white blob against the place where the sun would rise. He pushed back his mop.

“I don’t know.”

He remembered the panic flight down the mountain-side.

“I don’t think we’d ever fight a thing that size, honestly, you know. We’d talk but we wouldn’t fight a tiger. We’d hide. Even Jack’ud hide.”

Jack still looked at the sand.

“What about my hunters?”

Simon came stealing out of the shadows by the shelters. Ralph ignored Jack’s question. He pointed to the touch of yellow above the sea.

“As long as there’s light we’re brave enough. But then? And now that thing squats by the fire as though it didn’t want us to be rescued——”

He was twisting his hands now, unconsciously. His voice rose.

“So we can’t have a signal fire…. We’re beaten.”

A point of gold appeared above the sea and at once all the sky lightened.

“What about my hunters?”

“Boys armed with sticks.”

Jack got to his feet. His face was red as he marched away. Piggy put on his one glass and looked at Ralph.

“Now you done it. You been rude about his hunters.”

“Oh shut up!”

The sound of the inexpertly blown conch interrupted them. As though he were serenading the rising sun, Jack went on blowing till the shelters were astir and the hunters crept to the platform and the littluns whimpered as now they so frequently did. Ralph rose obediently, and Piggy and they went to the platform.

“Talk,” said Ralph bitterly, “talk, talk, talk.”

He took the conch from Jack.

“This meeting——”

Jack interrupted him.

“I called it.”

“If you hadn’t called it I should have. You just blew the conch.”

“Well isn’t that?”

“Oh, take it! Go on—talk!”

Ralph thrust the conch into Jack’s arms and sat down on the trunk.

“I’ve called an assembly,” said Jack, “because of a lot of things. First—you know now, we’ve seen the beast. We crawled up. We were only a few feet away. The beast sat up and looked at us. I don’t know what it does. We don’t even know what it is——”

“The beast comes out of the sea——”

“Out of the dark——”

“Trees——”

“Quiet!” shouted Jack. “You, listen. The beast is sitting up there, whatever it is——”

“Perhaps it’s waiting——”

“Hunting——”

“Yes, hunting.”

“Hunting,” said Jack. He remembered his age-old tremors in the forest. “Yes. The beast is a hunter. Only—shut up! The next thing is that we couldn’t kill it. And the next thing is that Ralph said my hunters are no good.”

“I never said that!”

“I’ve got the conch. Ralph thinks you’re cowards, running away from the boar and the beast. And that’s not all.”

There was a kind of sigh on the platform as if everyone knew what was coming. Jack’s voice went on, tremulous yet determined, pushing against the unco-operative silence.

“He’s like Piggy. He says things like Piggy. He isn’t a proper chief.”

Jack clutched the conch to him.

“He’s a coward himself.”

For a moment he paused and then went on.

“On top, when Roger and me went on—he stayed back.”

“I went too!”

“After.”

The two boys glared at each other through screens of hair.

“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 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 towards 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 towards 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 sang and there was a partyish air about the gathering.

At last Ralph stopped work and stood up, smudging the sweat from his face with a dirty forearm.

“We’ll have to have a small fire. This one’s too big to keep up.”

Piggy sat down carefully on the sand and began to polish his glass.

“We could experiment. We could find out how to make a small hot fire and then put green branches on to make smoke. Some of them leaves must be better for that than the others.”

As the fire died down so did the excitement. The littluns stopped singing and dancing and drifted away towards the sea or the fruit trees or the shelters.

Ralph flopped down in the sand.

“We’ll have to make a new list of who’s to look after the fire.”

“If you can find ’em.”

He looked round. Then for the first time he saw how few biguns there were and understood why the work had been so hard.

“Where’s Maurice?”

Piggy wiped his glass again.

“I expect … no, he wouldn’t go into the forest by himself, would he?”

Ralph jumped up, ran swiftly round the fire and stood by Piggy, holding up his hair.

“But we’ve got to have a list! There’s you and me and Samneric and——”

He would not look at Piggy but spoke casually.

“Where’s Bill and Roger?”

Piggy leaned forward and put a fragment of wood on the fire.

“I expect they’ve gone. I expect they won’t play either.”

Ralph sat down and began to poke little holes in the sand. He was surprised to see that one had a drop of blood by it. He examined his bitten nail closely and watched the little globe of blood that gathered where the quick was gnawed away.

Piggy went on speaking.

“I seen them stealing off when we was gathering wood. They went that way. The same way as he went himself.”

Ralph finished his inspection and looked up into the air. The sky, as if in sympathy with the great changes among them, was different to-day and so misty that in some places the hot air seemed white. The disc of the sun was dull silver as though it were nearer and not so hot, yet the air stifled.

“They always been making trouble, haven’t they?”

The voice came near his shoulder and sounded anxious.

“We can do without ’em. We’ll be happier now, won’t we?”

Ralph sat. The twins came, dragging a great log and grinning in their triumph. They dumped the log among the embers so that sparks flew.

“We can do all right on our own can’t we?”

For a long time while the log dried, caught fire and turned red hot, Ralph sat in the sand and said nothing. He did not see Piggy go to the twins and whisper with them, nor how the three boys went together into the forest.

“Here you are.”

He came to himself with a jolt. Piggy and the other two were by him. They were laden with fruit.

“I thought perhaps,” said Piggy, “we ought to have a feast kind of.”

The three boys sat down. They had a great mass of the fruit with them and all of it properly ripe. They grinned at Ralph as he took some and began to eat.

“Thanks,” he said. Then with an accent of pleased surprise—“Thanks!”

“Do all right on our own,” said Piggy. “It’s them that haven’t no common sense that make trouble on this island. We’ll make a little hot fire——”

Ralph remembered what had been worrying him.

“Where’s Simon?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t think he’s climbing the mountain?”

Piggy broke into noisy laughter and took more fruit.

“He might be.” He gulped his mouthful. “He’s cracked.”

*

 

Simon had passed through the area of fruit trees but to-day the littluns had been too busy with the fire on the beach and they had not pursued him there. He went on among the creepers until he reached the great mat that was woven by the open space and crawled inside. Beyond the screen of leaves the sunlight pelted down and the butterflies danced in the middle their unending dance. He knelt down and the arrow of the sun fell on him. That other time the air had seemed to vibrate with heat; but now it threatened. Soon the sweat was running from his long coarse hair. He shifted restlessly but there was no avoiding the sun. Presently he was thirsty, and then very thirsty.

He continued to sit.

*

 

Far off along the beach, Jack was standing before a small group of boys. He was looking brilliantly happy.

“Hunting,” he said. He sized them up. Each of them wore the remains of a black cap and ages ago they had stood in two demure rows and their voices had been the song of angels.

“We’ll hunt. I’m going to be chief.”

They nodded, and the crisis passed easily.

“And then—about the beast.”

They moved, looked at the forest.

“I say this. We aren’t going to bother about the beast.”

He nodded at them.

“We’re going to forget the beast.”

“That’s right!”

“Yes!”

“Forget the beast!”

If Jack was astonished by their fervour he did not show it.

“And another thing. We shan’t dream so much down here. This is near the end of the island.”

They agreed passionately out of the depths of their tormented private lives.

“Now listen. We might go later to the castle rock. But now I’m going to get more of the biguns away from the conch and all that. We’ll kill a pig and give a feast.” He paused and went on more slowly. “And about the beast. When we kill we’ll leave some of the kill for it. Then it won’t bother us, maybe.”

He stood up abruptly.

“We’ll go into the forest now and hunt.”

He turned and trotted away and after a moment they followed him obediently.

They spread out, nervously, in the forest. Almost at once Jack found the dug and scattered roots that told of pig and soon the track was fresh. Jack signalled the rest of the hunt to be quiet and went forward by himself. He was happy and wore the damp darkness of the forest like his old clothes. He crept down a slope to rocks and scattered trees by the sea.

The pigs lay, bloated bags of fat, sensuously enjoying the shadows under the trees. There was no wind and they were unsuspicious; and practice had made Jack silent as the shadows. He stole away again and instructed his hidden hunters. Presently they all began to inch forward sweating in the silence and heat. Under the trees an ear flapped idly. A little apart from the rest, sunk in deep maternal bliss, lay the largest sow of the lot. She was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.

Fifteen yards from the drove Jack stopped; and his arm, straightening, pointed at the sow. He looked round in inquiry to make sure that everyone understood and the other boys nodded at him. The row of right arms slid back.