Lord of the Flies by William Golding Read Free Book Online Page A

and decayed: creepers cradled them, and new saplings searched a way up.
                Jack turned to the choir, who stood ready. Their black caps of maintenance were slid over one ear like berets.
                "We'll build a pile. Come on."
                They found the likeliest path down and began tugging at the dead wood. And the small boys who had reached the top came sliding too till everyone but Piggy was busy. 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. The twins, Sam 'n Eric, were the first to get a likely log but they could do nothing till Ralph, Jack, Simon, Roger and Maurice found room for a hand-hold. Then they inched the grotesque dead thing up the rock and toppled it over on top. Each party of boys added a quota, less or more, and the pile grew. At the return Ralph found himself alone on a limb with Jack and they grinned at each other, sharing this burden. Once more, amid the breeze, the shouting, the slanting sunlight on the high mountain, was shed that glamour, that strange invisible light of friendship, adventure, and content.
                "Almost too heavy."
                Jack grinned back.
                "Not for the two of us."
                Together, joined in an effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep Of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure, so that immediately Ralph had to stand on his head. Below them, boys were still laboring, though some of the small ones had lost interest and were searching this new forest for fruit. Now the twins, with unsuspected intelligence, came up the mountain with armfuls of dried leaves and dumped them against the pile. One by one, as they sensed that the pile was complete, the boys stopped going back for more and stood, with the pink, shattered top of the mountain around them. Breath came evenly by now, and sweat dried.
                Ralph and Jack looked at each other while society paused about them. The shameful knowledge grew in them and they did not know how to begin confession.
                Ralph spoke first, crimson in the face.
                "Will you?"
                He cleared his throat and went on.
                "Will you light the fire?"
                Now the absurd situation was open, Jack blushed too. He began to mutter vaguely.
                "You rub two sticks. You rub--"
                He glanced at Ralph, who blurted out the last confession of incompetence.
                "Has anyone got any matches?"
                "You make a bow and spin the arrow," said Roger. He rubbed his hands in mime. "Psss. Psss."
                A little air was moving over the mountain. Piggy came with it, in shorts and shirt, laboring cautiously out of the forest with the evening sunlight gleaming from his glasses. He held the conch under his arm.
                Ralph shouted at him.
                "Piggy! Have you got any matches?"
                The other boys took up the cry till the mountain rang. Piggy shook his head and came to the pile.
                "My! You've made a big heap, haven't you?"
                Jack pointed suddenly.
                "His specs--use them as burning glasses!"
                Piggy was surrounded before he could back away.
                "Here--let me go!" His voice rose to a shriek of terror as Jack snatched the glasses off his face. "Mind out! Give 'em back! I can hardly see! You'll break the conch!"
                Ralph elbowed him to ne side and knelt by the pile.
                "Stand out of the light."
                There was