Disclaimer: ok. Last disclaimer ever for this story, I promise! Unless I want to put in an authors note, and those donas count! Yea, so changed a little bit, duh. Yea, no suing ness, aiight? I win!
Chapter Two; the Conch, the Camp, and Piggy
The stampede to the running water was great. Melanie did not know what to call it at first, it was too small to be a river, yet to call it a brook was too…tame. Something about this place struck Melanie deeply as being, well, savage, for lack of a better term.
"It's a stream," Simon interrupted her thoughts. She turned, purely amazed by his perceptiveness.
"I found it this morning, the water isn't salty, and it seems clean enough," by this time, they had managed to get to the stream fro a drink, and a wash, ish. They only had time to rinse their faces before the boys with the shortest legs arrived, shoving them aside for their drinks.
A few of them were trying to shove a third one, Peter, as Simon knew him, into the stream, but Ralph was quick to shoo them further downstream.
Later that morning, a few of the boys, Ralph and Jack included, set out to explore the island, leaving the fat boy in charge of the makeshift camp, if you could really call it that.
"Camp" from what Melanie could see; was so far just form the ocean to the foliage, from the curve of the beach to the palms that stood almost in a row, as if a farmer had planted them, near a small pool, where some of the smallest boys were bathing in its warm, blue-green depths.
But what if a storm blew through? They'd be in trouble then! Why, they didn't even have shelters up yet! Melanie thought.
Soon, the six boys that had left to explore, returned to camp. Jack and Ralph stood near the edge of the pool, talking about a pig, (a pig!) that Jack had almost killed, but Jack said that he "nearly got him, next time!" with a twinge of regret and aggression(?) in his voice.
Melanie crouched down near where the two boys were conversing, poking at the weeds with a stray stick she had found on the edge of the pool. Then, as if drawn by magic, Ralph's eyes shifted to the pool.
He entered the pool, cautiously, forgetting about Jack in mid-sentence. The fat boy had also wandered over, to talk to the two un-official leaders of the group.
Ralph waded back out of the pool and onto the beach, a large, pink shell in his hands.
"What is it?" he asked the fat boy.
"It's a Cow-n-CH!" the fat boy responded excitedly, putting emphasis on the "CH". Melanie had never heard of a "ConCH" before, and the shell greatly interested her.
"My Granny had one! If it had a hole right there, you could really blow it…" Jack snorted and the fat boy flushed at the innuendo.
"Like a trumpet." He finished, possibly not so grandly as he would have liked, owing to Jack's dirty interpretation (and interruption!).
Melanie stood, dusting off her legs. The "conch" (as the Piggy kid had called it) looked very pretty in the light, and she suspected that, despite the fat boy's excitement, that the "conch" would not make any sound.
She was wrong. Ralph put the conch to his lips and blew into it. The noise that came from this fragile shell was astounding!
Boys ran to the sound, from every direction, buttoning jackets, pulling up pants, and some, eating foreign fruit that was immediately discarded.
Ralph addressed the assemblage of boys, and Melanie crouched down next to Simon to help watch over Captain Benson.
"Ok, Cadets! Like I said, this island's probably uninhabited,"
"But we don't know! We gotta explore more!" Jack interrupted.
"Right, there's a lot of things we gotta do…"
"can I speak?" the fat boy. Melanie stood, and wanted to slap his stupid glasses off his disgusting face.
"the most important thing is, who knows we're here? Nobody knows we're here! They knew where we were going, but they don't know where we are because we never GOT where we were going!