The beginning of the chapter is still the same as the original, By Golding. The story changes towards the end after simon finds the beast and runs back to tell the others.
Over the island the build-up of clouds continued. Nothing prospered but the flies who blackened their lord and made the spilt guts look like a heap of glistening coal. Even when the vessel broke in Simon’s nose and the blood gushed out they left him alone, preferring the pig’s high flavour.
With the running of the blood Simon’s fit passed into the weariness of sleep. He lay in the mat of creepers. He turned over, drew his feet under him and laid hold of the creepers to pull himself up.
When the creepers shook, the flies exploded from the guts with a vicious note and clamped back on again. Simon got to his feet. The Lord of the Flies hung on his stick like a black ball. Simon spoke aloud to the clearing.
“What else is there to do?”
Nothing replied. Simon turned away from the open space and crawled through the creepers. He walked, staggering sometimes with his weariness but never stopping. The usual brightness was gone from his eyes and he walked with a sort of glum determination. He found his legs were weak and his tongue gave him pain all the time. He pushed himself forward and the wind came again, stronger. Simon saw a humped thing suddenly sit up on the top and look down at him. He hid his face, and toiled on.
The flies had found the figure too. The life-like movement would scare them off for a moment so that they made a dark cloud round the head. Then as the blue material of the parachute collapsed the corpulent figure would bow forward, sighing, and the flies settle once more. Simon felt his knees smack the rock. He crawled forward and soon he understood. The tangle of lines showed him the mechanics of this parody; he examined the white nasal bones, the teeth, the colours of corruption. He saw how pitilessly the layers of rubber and canvas held together the poor body that should be rotting away. Then the wind blew again and
the figure lifted, bowed, and breathed foully at him. Simon knelt on all fours and was sick till his stomach was empty. Then he took the lines in his hands; he freed them from the rocks and the figure from the wind’s indignity.
At last he turned away and looked down at the beaches. Even at that distance it was possible to see that most of the boys—perhaps all of the boys—were there. So they had shifted camp then, away from the beast. As Simon thought this, he turned to the poor broken thing that sat stinking by his side. The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible. He started down the mountain and his legs gave beneath him. Even with great care the best he could do was a stagger.
“Bathing,” said Ralph,
“that’s the only thing to do.”
Piggy was inspecting the looming-sky through his glass.
Ralph dived into the pool. Piggy took off his glasses, stepped primly into the water and then put them on again. Ralph came to the surface and squirted a jet of water at him.
“Mind my specs,” said Piggy.
“If I get water on the glass I got to get out and clean ’em.”
Ralph squirted again and missed. He laughed at Piggy, expecting him to retire meekly as usual and in pained silence. Instead, Piggy beat the water with his hands.
“Stop it!” he shouted. “D’you hear?”
Furiously he drove the water into Ralph’s face.
“All right, all right,” said Ralph.
“Keep your hair on.”
Piggy stopped beating the water.
“I got a pain in my head. I wish the air was cooler. I wish the rain would come.”
“I wish we could go home.”
Piggy lay back against the sloping sand side of the pool. His stomach protruded and the water dried on it.
“Where’s everybody?”
Piggy sat up.
Piggy pointed beyond the platform.
“That’s where they’ve gone. Jack’s party.”
“Let them go,” said Ralph, uneasily, “I don’t care.”
“Just for some meat—”
“And for hunting,” said Ralph, wisely,
“and for pretending to be a tribe, and putting on war-paint.”
Piggy stirred the sand under water and did not look at Ralph.
“P’raps we ought to go too.”
Ralph looked at him quickly and Piggy blushed.
“I mean—to make sure nothing happens.”
Long before Ralph and Piggy came up with Jack’s lot, they could hear the party. A fire burned on the rock and fat dripped from the roasting pig meat. All the boys of the island, except Piggy, Ralph, Simon, and the two tending the pig, were grouped on the turf. They were laughing, singing, lying, or standing on the grass, holding food in their hands. But to judge by the greasy faces, the meat eating was almost done; and some held coconut shells in their hands and were drinking from them.
Before the party had started a great log had been dragged into the center of the lawn and Jack, painted and garlanded, sat there like an idol. There were piles of meat on green leaves near him, and fruit, and coconut shells full of drink.
Piggy and Ralph came to the edge of the grassy platform; and the boys, as they noticed them, fell silent one by one till only the boy next to Jack was talking. Jack turned where he sat. For a time he looked at them. Ralph looked away; and Sam, thinking that Ralph had turned to him accusingly, put down his gnawed bone. Ralph whispered something inaudible to Piggy; and they both giggled like Sam. Lifting his feet high out of the sand, Ralph started to stroll past. Piggy tried to whistle.
At this moment the boys who were cooking at the fire suddenly hauled off a great chunk of meat and ran with it toward the grass. They bumped Piggy, who was burnt, and yelled and danced. Immediately, Ralph and the crowd of boys were united and relieved by a storm of laughter. Piggy once more was the center of social derision so that everyone felt cheerful and normal.
Jack stood up and waved his spear.
“Take them some meat.”
The boys with the spit gave Ralph and Piggy each a succulent chunk.
They took the gift, dribbling. So they stood and ate beneath a sky of thunderous brass that rang with the storm-coming. Jack waved his spear again.
“Has everybody eaten as much as they want?”
There was still food left, sizzling on the wooden spits, heaped on the green platters. Betrayed by his stomach, Piggy threw a picked bone down on the beach and stooped for more.
Jack spoke again, impatiently.“Has everybody eaten as much as they want?”
His tone conveyed a warning, given out of the pride of ownership, and the boys ate faster while there was still time. Seeing there was no immediate likelihood of a pause, Jack rose from the log that was his throne. He looked down from behind his paint at Ralph and Piggy. They moved a little farther off over the sand and Ralph watched the fire as he ate. Evening was come, not with calm beauty but with the threat of violence.
Jack spoke.
“Give me a drink.”
Henry brought him a shell and he drank, watching Piggy and Ralph over the jagged rim. Power lay in the brown swell of his forearms: authority sat on his shoulder and chattered in his ear like an ape.
“All sit down.”
The boys ranged themselves in rows on the grass before him but Ralph and Piggy stayed a foot lower, standing on the soft sand. Jack ignored them for the moment, turned his mask down to the seated boys and pointed at them with the spear.
“Who’s going to join my tribe? I gave you food,” said Jack,
“and my hunters will protect you from the beast. Who will join my tribe?”
“I’m chief,” said Ralph,
“because you chose me. And we were going to keep the fire going. Now you run after food—”
“You ran yourself!” shouted Jack.
“Look at that bone in your hands!”
Ralph went crimson.
“I said you were hunters. That was your job.”
Jack ignored him again.
“Who’ll join my tribe and have fun?”
“I’m chief,” said Ralph tremulously.
“And what about the fire? And I’ve got the conch.”
“You haven’t got it with you,” said Jack, sneering.
“You left it behind. See, clever? And the conch doesn’t count at this end of the island—”
All at once the thunder struck. Instead of the dull boom there was a point of impact in the explosion.
“The conch counts here too,” said Ralph,
“and all over the island.”
“What are you going to do about it then?”
Ralph examined the ranks of boys. There was no help in them and he looked away, confused and sweating. Piggy whispered.
“Who’ll join my tribe?”
“I will.”
“Me.”
“I will.”
“I’ll blow the conch,” said Ralph breathlessly,
“and call an assembly.”
“We shan’t hear it.”
Piggy touched Ralph’s wrist.
“Come away. There’s going to be trouble. And we’ve had our meat.”
There was a blink of bright light beyond the forest and the thunder exploded again so that a littlun started to whine. Big drops of rain fell among them making individual sounds when they struck.
“Going to be a storm,” said Ralph, “and you’ll have rain like when we dropped here. Who’s clever now? Where are your shelters? What are you going to do about that?”
The hunters were looking uneasily at the sky, flinching from the stroke of the drops. A wave of restlessness set the boys swaying and moving aimlessly. The flickering light became brighter and the blows of the thunder were only just bearable. The littluns began to run about, screaming.
Jack leapt on to the sand.
“Do our dance! Come on! Dance!”
He ran stumbling through the thick sand to the open space of rock beyond the fire. Between the flashes of lightning the air was dark and terrible; and the boys followed him, clamorously. Roger became the pig, grunting and charging at Jack, who side-stepped. The hunters took their spears, the cooks took spits, and the rest clubs of firewood. A circling
movement developed and a chant. While Roger mimed the terror of the pig, the littluns ran and jumped on the outside of the circle.
Piggy and Ralph, under the threat of the sky, found themselves eager to take a place
in this demented but partly secure society. They were glad to touch the brown backs of the fence that hemmed in the terror and made it governable.
“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”
The movement became regular while the chant lost its first superficial excitement and began to beat like a steady pulse. Roger ceased to be a pig and became a hunter, so that the center of the ring yawned emptily.
Some of the littluns started a ring on their own; and the complementary circles went round and round as though repetition would achieve safety of itself. There was the throb and stamp of a single organism. The dark sky was shattered by a blue-white scar. An instant later the noise was on them like the blow of a gigantic whip. The chant rose a tone in agony.
“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”
Now out of the terror rose another desire, thick, urgent, blind.
“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”
Again the blue-white scar jagged above them and the sulphurous explosion beat down. The littluns screamed and blundered about, fleeingfrom the edge of the forest, and one of them broke the ring of biguns in his terror.
“Him! Him!”
The circle became a horseshoe. A thing was crawling out of the forest. It came darkly, uncertainly. The shrill screaming that rose before the beast was like a pain. The beast stumbled into the horseshoe.
“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”
The blue-white scar was constant, the noise unendurable. Simon was crying out something about a dead man on a hill.
“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!”
The sticks fell and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed.
The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable noise something about a body on the hill. The beast struggled forward, broke the ring. At once the crowd surged after it, leapt on to the beast, screamed, and thrusted towards it. Then the clouds opened and let down the rain like a waterfall. Presently the heap broke up and figures staggered away. Only the beast lay still in agonising pain, a few yards from the sea. Ralph rushes to the marked crowd of speechless boys to see Simon at their feet, staining the sand beneath him.
“We didn’t know..”
“Look what your stupid games led you to do!”
Ralph shouts in an audible panic as he puts pressure on Simon’s most aggravated wound.
“You and your foolishness will get us all killed I tell ya!”
Jack’s heart races at the realisation of what they’ve just done. Yet shows no sign of emotion, ever so slightly some boys take a small step back from the chaos they have caused.
“He shouldn’t ‘ave ran up at us like that. You oughta thank us for not finishing him off like we would’ve done with the real beast.”
Now a great wind blew the rain sideways, cascading the water from the forest trees. On the mountain-top the parachute filled and moved; the figure slid, rose to its feet, spun, swayed down through a vastness of wet air and trod with ungainly feet the tops of the high trees; falling, still falling, it sank toward the beach and the boys rushed screaming into the darkness. The parachute took the figure forward and bumped it over the reef and out to sea.
Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach
and the stains spread, inch by inch.
The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the scene of midnight terror. Simon awakened in Ralph’s camp with a rush of pain swiftly moving through his whole body. At first he thought of last night as a terrible nightmare but quickly snapped back to reality after feeling the unhealed wound and dried blood around it, not needing to even look at it.
As he lay there he heard a faint familiar voice aside from the ringing in his ears. He made it out to be Ralph’s but the tremor in Ralph’s voice unsettled Simon, making him spring up from his leafy bed.
Ralph leaned over Simon pushing his mass back down on the leaves.
Simon could barely make out Ralph’s siluette above him. A second figure appeared behind Ralph.
“You must rest, Simon.”
As Simon ringing in the ears fades he could hear the voices clearer. It was Piggy.
“You’ll be just fine, but you can’t be moving too much until the wound stops bleeding. Your body needs the energy to restore itself.”
Hearing Ralph’s reassuring tone Simon relaxes his tense body and is offered fresh water.