First, thank you to Lauren Kassidy for reviewing the first chapter.
Second- I still am only sixteen, and it's still 2011. NOT 1927. Therefore, I am not William Golding.
Here is the second chapter of The Beast Within. I hope everyone enjoys it.
-Callum
Chapter Two: Snakes and Green Wood
Jack stood by Ralph as he blew the conch; Simon sat at their feet. The platform was becoming quite crowded, and all the boys were shifting uncomfortably. Jack guessed that they were all as sunburned as he was. He noticed that the choir had shed their clocks and spread out a bit. Maurice and Robert, for example, were talking with those twins. Roger sat on his own. Jack thought about going to sit with him, but decided to stay with Ralph, because he knew that the boys were looking up to him when he stood there. He sat down, however, by Simon, because he didn't want to be the only one standing.
Once it seemed all the boys were there, Ralph cleared his throat, and from his seated position on a fallen tree trunk, began to speak. Jack looked at him, paying attention, even though he knew what Ralph was going to say.
"Well, then. We're on an island. We've been on the mountain top and seen water all around. We saw no houses, no smoke, no footprints, no boats, no people. We're on an uninhabited island with no other people on it."
Jack thought fleetingly that he was rather certain that the definition of uninhabited meant that there were no other people, meaning Ralph's sentence was redundant, but he wasn't sure, and anyway, it wasn't nearly as important as the other thing he wanted to say, so he said that instead.
"All the same you need an army—for hunting. Huntng pigs—"
"Yes. There are pigs on the island."
"We saw—" Simon broke in, trying to explain along with them.
"Squealing—"
"It broke away—"
"Before I could kill it—but—next time!" Jack said. He needed to kill it next time. They would all think he was weak if he didn't. And he couldn't stand the thought of anyone thinking he was weak, particularly Ralph. He was pretty sure Ralph was the oldest on the island, and that meant that his respect meant the most of all.
The others jabbered, but it calmed down when Jack stabbed his knife into the tree trunk where Ralph sat, and glared around.
"So you see," said Ralph "We need hunters to get us meat. And another thing." Ralph raised the shell, Jack wasn't sure why. Ralph continued "There aren't any grownups. We shall have to look after ourselves.
"And another thing. We can't have everybody talking at once. We'll have to have 'hands up' like at school. Then I'll give him the conch." Ralph lifted the conch again, but this time Jack understood why. Jack had thought that they were away from rules now, and nearly sighed in frustration.
"Conch?" someone asked, one of the older boys, young enough not to feel too silly that they didn't know the word, but old enough that they would interrupt.
"That's what this shell's called. I'll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it while he's speaking."
"But—"
"Look—"
"And he won't be interrupted. Except by me."
Jack jumped up, realizing the good side of rules. "We'll have rules! Lots of rules! And then when somebody breaks 'em—" Rules had almost always worked in Jack's favour, even if they were a bit irritating at times. He enjoyed enforcing them quite a bit.
"Whee-oh!"
"Wacco!"
"Bong!" Jack hadn't heard that one before. He supposed that the speaker must have been from different parts.
"Doink!"
As they jabbered excitedly, Piggy stood up and came over from where he sat, slightly outside the group. He took the conch from Ralph, who looked startled, but seemed to be going to let Piggy speak. Jack stood uncertainly until Ralph patted the log where he was sitting, and Jack sat down next to him. Ralph was too nice, for a chief, he thought. If it were him, he wouldn't let anyone sit where he was, so that his place would seem more important.
"You're hindering Ralph," Piggy told them. "You're not letting him get to the most important thing."
He paused, as everyone looked at him with varying degrees of interest.
"Who knows we're here? Eh?"
"They knew at the airport," Maurice pointed out.
"The man with the trumpet thing—"
"My dad." That was Ralph. Jack did not understand this devotion that Ralph had towards his father. His own father stayed in his study most of the time when Jack was not at school, and believed that children should not speak at the dinner table. In effect, Jack's father probably knew him about as well as the man who delivered the milk to the school every morning.
"Nobody knows where we are," Piggy said. "Perhaps they knew where we was going to; and perhaps not. But they don't know where we are 'cos we never got there." He seemed unsteady, and Ralph took the conch from his hands.
"That's what I was going to say when you all, all… The plane was shot down in flames. Nobody knows where we are. We may be here a long time."
Everyone was silent. Jack wondered what Ralph would say next. He watched as Ralph pushed his hair off his forehead.
"So we may be here a long time," Ralph repeated. Still, nobody spoke. "But this is a good island. We—Jack Simon and me—we climbed the mountain. It's wizard. There's food and drink and—"
"Rocks—" Jack added.
"Blue flowers—" Simon said. He was holding two of the said flowers in his hand, twirling them by the stem. Jack supposed he had picked them while they were on the mountain.
Piggy pointed to the conch in Ralph's hand, and Jack and Simon fell silent. Ralph kept talking.
"While we're waiting we can have a good time on this island. It's like in a book."
"Treasure island—" Rupert cried out. Jack had read Treasure Island at school last term. He enjoyed it quite a bit, but he doubted that their time on the island would be much like that.
"Swallows and amazons—"
"Coral island—"
Ralph waved the conch for attention, and everyone looked back at him respectfully. "This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun."
Jack held out his hand for the conch, and Ralph put it in his hand.
"There's pigs. There's food; and bathing water in that little stream along there—and everything. Didn't anyone find anything else?" No one offered anything, so he handed the conch back to Ralph, and sat back down on the log.
The attention of the older boys was caught by a group of little boys trying to push another boy forward. He was resisting. He was quite small, and a large purple birthmark covered half of his face. He looked like he was about to cry.
"All right, come on then," Ralph said to him. The boy looked even more nervous. Jack was fairly sure that Ralph was not going about this the right way, but he had no idea what the right way would be, so he stayed quiet.
"Speak up!"
The boy held out his hands for the conch, and everyone began to laugh. Jack wasn't sure why they were laughing, since the boy was following the rules, but it was amusing all the same, and so he laughed. The boy snatched his hands back, and began to cry.
"Let him have the conch!" Piggy exclaimed. "Let him have it!" Jack sneered at Piggy, as he always did when Piggy spoke.
Ralph came forward to give the boy the shell, but the boy was too embarrassed to speak. Piggy knelt by the boy, one hand on the conch, listening to the boy as he whispered into Piggy's ear.
"He wants to know what you're going to do about the snake-thing," Piggy said. Giggles and snickers could be heard from the entire group. Ralph was laughing as well. The small boy looked even more nervous.
"Tell us about the snake-thing."
"Now he says it was a beastie."
"Beastie?"
"A snake-thing. Ever so big. He saw it."
"Where?"
"In the woods."
"You couldn't have a beastie, a snake-thing, on an island this size." Ralph had modified his tone to be kind and calming. "You only get them in big countries, like Africa, or India."
"He says the beastie came in the dark."
"Then he couldn't have seen it!" Jack burst out. Everyone else laughed.
"Did you hear that? Says he saw the thing in the dark—"
"He still says he saw the beastie. It came and went away again 'an came back and wanted to eat him—"
"He was dreaming."
Ralph was looking at the other boys, Jack saw in his eyes that he was searching for reassurance. That worried Jack. Did Ralph not think what he said was true? But Ralph couldn't believe in the beastie. Jack looked too. All of the older boys were convinced that the birthmark boy had been dreaming, but some of the younger ones looked unsure.
"He must have had a nightmare. Stumbling about among all those creepers." Everyone knew about nightmares. More of the boys seemed convinced.
"He says he saw the beastie, the snake-thing, and will it come back tonight?"
"But there isn't a beastie!" Ralph was running his hands through his hair. Most people looked quite serious, although Simon, to Jack's eye, looked mostly bemused.
"Ralph's right of course," Jack said, having taken the conch from Piggy. "There isn't a snake-thing. But if there was a snake, we'd hunt it and kill it. We're going to hunt pigs to get meat for everybody. And we'll look for the snake too—"
"But there isn't a snake!" Ralph exclaimed, extremely frustrated.
"We'll make sure when we go hunting," Jack told him, happy to have given him and his hunters another purpose.
"But there isn't a beast!" Ralph paused. "But I tell you, there isn't a beast!" he said louder. Everyone was quiet. Ralph's face shifted, and he looked much calmer.
"Now we come to the most important thing. I've been thinking. I was thinking while we were climbing the mountain." As he said this, Ralph flashed a grin at Jack and Simon. "And on the beach just now. This is what I thought. We want to have fun. And we want to be rescued."
All the voices roared up at once, and Ralph seemed startled. When he began talking again, he seemed to have lost his train of thought. Jack thought that Ralph was quite likely to be giving rather a lot of speeches as chief, and should get better at it, or there could be trouble.
"We want to be rescued, and of course we shall be rescued." People began to speak even more quickly, and Ralph had to wave the conch before they would shut up.
"My father's in the navy," Ralph said. Back to his father. "He said there aren't any unknown islands anymore." Jack wondered if Ralph's trust might be misplaced. "He says the Queen has a big room full of maps and all the islands in the world are drawn there. So the Queen's got a picture of this island. And sooner or later a ship will put in here." Why would they, Jack wondered, if they knew that there was nothing on the island?
"It might even be Daddy's ship."
At the word 'Daddy' Maurice and Robert snickered. It was such a childish way to refer to a father. Jack found himself wanting to defend Ralph, but he thought it was childish too. So he said nothing, waiting for Ralph to continue.
"So you see, sooner or later we'll be rescued."
This set in, and everyone began to clap. Ralph flushed bright red with pleasure. Jack saw him look to Piggy, and then Ralph looked over at him. Jack wondered what he looked like. He thought he might be smirking, he hoped he didn't look mean, and he was clapping with everyone else.
"Shut up! Wait! Listen," Ralph said, after a minute or so. "There's another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire."
"A fire! Make a fire!" shouted everyone.
Jack jumped up. "Come on! Follow me!" The entire crowd came following him up the mountain.
Ralph joined him at the top of the mountain, and gestured at the opposite side.
"Down there we could get as much wood as we wanted." Jack nodded, looking at the fallen trees.
Jack turned to the choir, who had their hats on strangely, rather like berets. He ignored the hats and said "We'll build a pile. Come on."
They slipped down the easiest path they could find, and began pulling at the wood. Much of it broke to splinters the minute they pulled it out, too rotten to be any good, but the twins, Sam n' Eric, found a usable log. They couldn't carry it themselves, so Jack and a whole group of the older boys had to help. They pulled it to the top, slowly, stopping fairly often to catch their breath. They got it to the top of the mountain, where it was soon joined by the logs that the other boys carried up. Jack noticed that Piggy did no work at all. He supposed he was too fat to carry things.
On one log, Jack found that he was working with Ralph. The two of them smiled at each other, and Ralph said "Almost too heavy."
"Not for the two of us," Jack replied.
"One! Two! Three!" They chanted as they climbed. They dropped the log onto the pile with a great crash. Ralph stood on his head again with excitement. Jack was beginning to realize that standing on his head in excitement was some sort of odd quirk of Ralph's; he did it quite often.
Below, some of the smaller boys had stopped working, to look for fruit, but many of the boys still laboured. The twins brought up armfuls of dried leaves, surprising initiative on their part. Slowly, all of the boys ceased working, as they realized that the pile was big enough.
Jack and Ralph looked at each other, both realizing at the same time something very important.
"Will you?" Ralph began, talking specifically to Jack. He was blushing, and Jack thought that he might be as well. "Will you light the fire?"
"You rub two sticks. You rub—" Jack said, awkwardly.
"Does anyone have any matches?" Ralph asked desperately.
All of that for nothing, Jack thought. It would be horribly bad for the older boys' position of authority if the younger ones saw that they had overlooked something so important. It would be especially bad for Ralph.
"You make a bow and spin the arrow," Roger said, miming. "Pss, pss."
Piggy came up the mountain, breath laboured. He held the conch under one arm. Silly conch!
"Piggy! Have you got any matches?" Ralph asked him.
"My! You've made a big heap, haven't you?" Piggy said, shaking his head.
Jack squinted at the glint of the sun off Piggy's glasses, and then was caught by an idea.
"His specs—use them as burning glasses!"
The boys pounced on Piggy. "Here—let me go!" Jack snatched the glasses off his face. "Mind out! Give 'em back! I can hardly see. You'll break the conch!"
Ralph took the glasses from Jack, and nudged Piggy out of the way. Jack thought he did it rather too gently.
"Stand out of the light," Ralph said. He held the glasses over the pile, trying to angle them so as to get the strongest beam of light possible. A thin trickle of smoke appeared, and Jack leaned over to blow it into flame, as Ralph turned away to cough. The flame went higher, and all the boys cheered, except for Piggy.
"My specs! Give me my specs!" Jack privately felt that Piggy was not the right name. Baby would be his first choice. Ralph put the glasses into Piggy's hands.
A few of the small boys were dancing about the fire, and the older ones quickly joined in. Jack found himself circling the fire, with Roger on the other side. For a moment Jack was frightened. Roger looked as though he could be hunting, hunting for Jack. Jack had no doubts that if Roger was hunting, he would be hunting to kill. Then Jack remembered that Roger was on his side.
The fire blazed, and ate the brittle wood. It was so fast, the whole pile fell in on itself, but still the fire blazed.
"More wood!" Ralph yelled. "More wood!"
Everyone ran to get more wood, with no thoughts in their heads except to keep the fire burning. The heat of the fire blew into everyone's faces, leaving them damp with sweat. They slowed their desperate wood gathering, and held their faces to the cool evening breeze. Without the wood, the breeze blew out the fire.
"That was no good," Ralph said, from his laying position next to Jack.
"What do you mean?" Roger asked. He spat into the dirt.
"There wasn't any smoke, only fire."
It had been a glorious fire though, Jack thought. Absolutely brilliant.
"We haven't made a fire. What's the use?" Piggy asked. He was not nearly as sweaty or exhausted as the rest, because, yet again, he had done no work. "We couldn't keep a fire like that going, not if we tried."
"A fat lot you tried. You just sat there." Jack sneered at Piggy.
"We used his specs. He helped that way," Simon said. His face was black with soot, and he wiped it with his arm. It made no difference.
"I got the conch! You let me speak!" Piggy said, gesturing to said shell.
"The conch doesn't count on top of the mountain, so you shut up," Jack said.
"I got the conch in my hand!"
"Put on green branches. That's the best way to make smoke," Maurice suggested.
"I got the conch!"
Jack whirled on him, his fiercest glare on his face, the one he saved for when someone sang out of tune in choir. "You shut up!" he told Piggy. Piggy sank back, and Ralph took the conch from him.
"We've got to have special people for looking after the fire. Any day there may be a ship out there and if we have a signal going they'll come and take us off. And another thing. We ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that's a meeting. The same up here as down there."
Everyone agreed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Jack was upset, because Ralph was agreeing with Piggy about the conch. Glaring at Piggy, Jack held his hands out for the conch. He might as well make the best of the situation.
"I agree with Ralph. We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. So we've got to do the right things." Turning to Ralph, he made a decision to try his best to be cooperative, while still keeping his power. "Ralph, I'll split up the choir—my hunters, that is—into groups, and we'll be responsible for keeping the fire going—
"We'll let the fire burn out for now," he said. "Who would see smoke at nighttime, anyway? And we can start the fire again whenever we like. Altos, you can keep the fire going next week, and trebles the next—"
They agreed.
"And we'll be responsible for keeping a lookout too. If we see a ship out there" he gestured at the horizon "we'll put green branches on. Then there'll be more smoke."
After a moment where all stared at the horizon, Roger took the conch from Jack. He spoke, which was mildly surprising to Jack. "I've been watching the sea. There hasn't been a trace of a ship. Perhaps we'll never be rescued." Jack was less surprised once he heard how gloomy Roger was.
Ralph took the conch back.
"I said before we'll be rescued sometime. We've just got to wait, that's all."
Piggy took the conch, his expression sour. "That's what I said! I said about our meetings and things and then you said shut up—" His voice rose to a whine, and the others began to speak over him, telling him to shut up. "You said you wanted a small fire, and then went and built a pile as big as a hayrick. If I say anything, you say shut up, but if Jack or Maurice or Simon—" he broke off, looking down the mountain towards where they had gotten the trees. He laughed, a weird laugh, and they all followed his gaze.
Smoke drifted up.
"You got your small fire all right," Piggy said.
As they watched, a flash of fire started at the root of one of the trees, and it all began to spread. The boys began to cheer and dance. Roger led the dance, but as soon as Jack began to dance, the boys followed his lead.
"You got your small fire all right," Piggy repeated, as the fire got so large that the boys were stunned into silence.
"Oh shut up!" Ralph said to Piggy.
"I got the conch, I got the right to speak." None of them cared what he said. "We've got to let that burn out now. And that was our firewood. There ain't nothing we can do. We ought to be more careful." A few of the little boys were beginning to look more nervous than excited, and one of the very smallest began to cry.
"I'm scared—" Piggy started, but Jack cut him off.
"You're always scared. Yah—Fatty!"
"I got the conch." Piggy turned towards Ralph, and Jack felt a surge of irritation at the way everyone looked to Ralph. Not that he wanted Piggy to look to him, of course, Piggy was too stupid to properly associate with, but he still felt irritated. "I got the conch, ain't I, Ralph?" Piggy asked.
Ralph turned to him, distractedly. Jack was mildly pleased to see that Ralph didn't seem very concerned with what Piggy said. "What's that?"
"The conch! I got a right to speak."
Sam n' Eric giggled.
"We wanted smoke—"
"Now look—!" Jack wondered if they often finished each other's sentences. It was not too hard to understand, because they sounded almost exactly alike, and their timing was impeccable.
The smoke that the twins were speaking of stretched out across the water, it seemed like forever. All of the boys began to laugh, except for Piggy.
"I got the conch! Just you listen! The first thing we ought to have made was shelters down there by the beach. But the first time Ralph says 'fire' you goes howling and screaming up this mountain. Like a pack of kids!" Piggy had caught everyone's attention. "How can you expect to be rescued if you don't put first things first and act proper? Then when you get here you build a bonfire that isn't no use. Now you been and set the whole island on fire. Won't we look funny if the whole island burns up? Cooked fruit, that's what we'll have to eat, and roast pork. And that's nothing to laugh at! You said Ralph was chief, and you don't give him time to think. Then when he says something, you rush off, like, like…" he paused, breathing hard, the noise of the fire all around them. "And that's not all. Them kids. The little 'uns. Who took any notice of 'em? Who knows how many we got?"
Ralph startled everyone by speaking. "I told you to! I told you to get a list of names!" he sounded frantic.
"How could I? All by myself. They waited for two minutes, then they fell into the sea; they went into the forest; they just scattered everywhere. How was I to know which was which?"
Everyone looked back and forth from Piggy to Ralph. Jack thought that most of the little ones didn't understand what the two were getting at, but all of the bigger ones knew, and they were nearly as worried as Ralph. Ralph was so white Jack thought he might go into a faint, like Simon. Thinking of that, he looked to Simon to make sure he hadn't fainted. He hadn't. Instead, he was shushing a little one who understood what was being said.
"Then you don't know how many of us there are supposed to be?"
"How could I with them little 'uns running round like insects? Then when you three came back, when you said make a fire, they all ran anyway, and I didn't have a chance—"
"That's enough!" Ralph cut him off, taking away the conch. "If you didn't then you didn't."
"—Then you come here an pinch my specs—"
Ralph was going to a more normal colour now, although Jack thought it was quite likely that he was going red from anger, but he had been so white that he looked normal now.
"You shut up!" Jack told Piggy.
"—and them little 'uns was wandering about down there where the fire is. How d'you know they aren't still there?"
Everyone's gazes trailed reluctantly to the smoke and flames, which had replaced the forest where many little 'uns had gone looking for fruit.
"That little 'un—" Piggy said, stopping to gasp for his breath. "Him with the mark on his face, I don't see him. Where is he now?"
Everyone was silent. Nobody else saw him either.
"Him that talked about the snakes. He was down there—"
Piggy was cut off, but it didn't help to make anyone less upset, because a tree exploded. It sounded like a bomb, and the explosion sent creepers flying into the air.
"Snakes! Snakes!" screamed the little ones. "Look at the snakes."
Piggy continued to speak his frightening words. "That little 'un that had a mark on his face—where is—he now? I tell you I don't see him. Where is he now?"
"Perhaps he went back to the, the…" Jack heard Ralph murmur, but Ralph didn't sound very hopeful. Jack looked at Ralph's face for a long moment, at its shadowed eyes and cheekbones, lit oddly by the evening sun, before he turned to stare at the fire, raging below. The noise never stopped.