As much as Ralph continued to insist he wasn't 'in charge' per say while they remained on the island, he continued to act as the manager of the group. Jack, Ralph and the other 7th and 8th graders lead the others up the hill the following day to set up the fire they'd keep going at all times. Ralph separated each of the boys into partners or threes and each group would have a turn on fire watch, and switch off on a hourly basis. The assigned pair's job was to ensure the fire wouldn't go out, by throwing more logs and sticks onto it to keep it lit at all times during their watch.
"How are we gonna get the fire going, sir?" little Mikey asked Jack as they headed up the hill.
"I know what I'm doing, trust me" Jack insisted. He never gave the boy a direct answer.
When all the cadets reached the top of the hill, they gathered sticks and logs and tossed them into a pile several feet away from the tree. Jack began rubbing the sticks together to ignite a flame, to no avail. Others tried to step in and offer help, but Jack refused as he continued to work at it alone, blurting out a spur of curses words.
When Jack and Piggy got into another fight, an idea popped into Ralph's head.
"Wait a minute" he piped up, "Piggy give me your glasses" he requested as he took them off the chubby boy's face.
"Hey, give those back!" Piggy snatched at him.
"Trust me" Ralph assured him as he bent down and held the glare of the glasses against the wood, the sun reflecting directly through. It took a moment, but eventually there was fire.
The boys started screaming and chanting with joy as the fire continued to grow. When it didn't stop spreading beyond their wood pile, everyone started to panic as Jack, Ralph and the older boys began stomping on the spreading flames and smacking it with their uniform jackets in attempt to control it. Eventually it spread to the tree, and most of the boys had started their way down the hill to stay safe.
It wasn't long before the fire died out, as there was nowhere for it continue to spread. Jack and Ralph sent the others down the hill as the two gathered more firewood to relight it, knowing that it had already burned up everything it could.
"Piggy and Percy can take the first watch" Ralph told Jack as they piled up the wood. "No point in sending anyone up here without Piggy's glasses to get it going."
"Fine with me. But it'd be easier if we just took the damn things from him" Jack laughed to himself.
"Piggy needs his glasses" Ralph argued.
"Whatever" Jack rolled his eyes. "This ought to be enough wood."
"Go send for Piggy and Percy before the sun goes down. I'll wait here and light it when they get here" Ralph requested of Jack.
"You got it, colonel" Jack nodded as he made his way down the hill.
And with that, the fire watch rotation began. An hour or so later, Tony and Larry relieved Piggy and Percival from the watch. Throughout the night, each group memorized when it was their turn to go up the hill and relieve the others.
Over the course of the first week on the island, everyone was good about taking their turn on fire watch and ensuring it kept going day and night. Most of the boys, especially the little ones, continued to look to Ralph for survival and leadership. Jack took role as second to Ralph, just as he would have as lieutenant colonel had they made it to the Menwith Hill Station base in England. Ralph and Jack worked as a team, leaning on each other for support and to discuss ideas on how to hunt pigs, search fruit and other food sources, maintain the tree-made shelters, and manage the worries and fears of the other boys.
On their 9th morning on the island, Jack and Ralph were the first two to awake. Ralph watched Jack cut the legs off his uniform pants with the survival knife he'd stashed in his jacket pocket, the same secure pocket Ralph had kept his glowstick. The two decided to take a walk down by the beachfront to discuss the plan for the day, and work through things Ralph didn't think the younger boys should hear.
"What if someone gets really sick?" Ralph considered as he walked with Jack.
"Man, you gotta stop worrying so much" Jack insisted. "We got it made. No parents, no teachers, no academy, no girls... course I wouldn't mind getting a little every now and then" Jack laughed at his own remark.
"Like you ever got any" Ralph scoffed mockingly.
"Well, I still wouldn't mind" Jack shrugged. He'd never even kissed a girl before, but he wasn't about to let Ralph know that.
Jack suddenly grabbed onto Ralph and pushed him playfully to the ground. The sand stuck to the younger boy's uniform pants like glitter glue. Ralph pulled himself halfway up and used his body weight to take Jack down into the water. Jack, who's ego would never let Ralph make the last move, stood up and shoved Ralph hard into the sand.
Ralph cried out in pain and grasped his broken arm which he'd fallen onto. "Ow, my arm" he complained.
"You okay?" Jack asked, concern in his voice as he moved closer to his friend. He wasn't expecting it when Ralph hooked his leg around Jack's and used it to take him down too.
"Sike" Ralph mocked him, and he could tell by Jack's face that the older boy was impressed by his trick. As they made eye contact, they both burst out laughing.
When they returned to the camp sometime later, Ralph checked in on the fire watch rotation, ensuring each pair knew when it was their turn to head up. Others started complaining of being hungry again.
"I'm gonna try and get that pig to come out of hiding" Jack decided as he located his survival knife. "You comin' Ralph?"
"I suppose I could" Ralph agreed and the two boys set out into the forest area in search of the animal. They stepped carefully and quietly in attempt to prevent the pig from knowing they were coming. They walked in silence for about twenty minutes, but it wasn't awkward. Jack and Ralph had become close enough that they could coexist without feeling pressured to make small talk just to evade the silence.
When Jack finally heard rustling in the leaves, he leapt at the source, and the hiding pig booked it in the other direction. Jack hadn't even gotten close to it before it heard him and ran, but he was embarrassed by his inability to provide. "Almost had 'em" Jack lied, and Ralph sighed, hoping that eventually they'd just get lucky.
By their third week on the island, most boys had adjusted to the drastic changes that occurred in their eating patterns, sleep cycles, and daily routines. Most of them had become surprisingly comfortable living with animals and sleeping outside without blankets. Simon found a solid green veiled chameleon on one of the branches during his morning walk one day, and decided to keep him as a pet. With Ralph spending so much time with Jack these days, Simon was starting to feel pretty isolated. He gave his chameleon friend a name in his head, but never told any of the other boys.
Simon had been assigned to take care of Captain Benson. The other boys helped out every now and again but for the most part, Simon spent the most time with the injured man. He was becoming increasingly worried as his condition failed to improve. He was unconscious about 80% of the time, occasionally awaking to groan, toss, and turn. They created a solo shelter for him, which is where he spent all his time. Ralph too was starting to notice some of the signs of major head trauma in him. When Captain Benson was conscious, his behavior was becoming more disturbing and unusual.
Just shy of a month into their time on the island, some of the younger boys started taking the rules Ralph initially put in place less seriously. They were less focused on searching for food and water and more interested in finding less helpful ways to occupy themselves. Ralph and Jack's levels of concern were slowly drifting in opposite directions, and so the two weren't spending as much time together as they had been up til now. When they weren't assigned to fire watch, or collecting food and water, Ralph was making short term plans, helping other boys during their searches for resources, and maintaining the shelters that got knocked around a little during the night. Meanwhile during Jack's free time, he could often be found goofing off, playing in the rivers and the ocean, throwing sand at Roger, and virtually anything else he could come up with.
Soon, Ralph was becoming fed up. He felt he was pulling most of the weight around here, and Jack's behavior had a bad influence on the younger boys. Many of them followed Jack's lead and spent more time playing games and messing around when they could've been helping maintain the camp. As the elected leader, Ralph finally decided it was time to use that position to reestablish some order round here.
He used the conch to call an assembly. Every boy on the island came gathering around, although it took about fifteen minutes for Ralph to get them all there.
"The reason I'm calling this assembly is too many people are screwing around when they should be working... and there's a bunch of things" Ralph declared from atop the rock he stood upon, elevated higher than the others to establish control. "All I mean is we gotta have a little more discipline. We should be spear fishing, for real food. That's all I got to say" he concluded. "Anyone else want the conch?"
"Some jerkoff stole my pocket knife" Jack chimed in from the crowd, not waiting until he had the conch to speak up.
"Yeah, things are disappearing all over" someone added.
"What are we gonna do with theives when we catch 'em?" another asked, causing the crowd to all start talking over each other, shouting their ideas.
"Okay, okay!" Ralph screamed as loud as his tired voice would let him. "We can't just have kids stealing and running wild. We're gonna have to have stricter rules" he took it upon himself to decide. "And hand out demerits, I guess."
Jack and the others laughed at Ralph's suggestion, mocking the way he was still trying to enforce academy rules on them after all this time on the island. As the crowd continued to poke fun of Ralph, one of the second grade boys pushed his way to the front of the group to approach Ralph.
"Sir, are we ever going home?" the little one Ralph knew as Peter asked him.
"Course we are. As soon as they see our signal" Ralph assured him.
"Jack says that we're never gonna be rescued" Peter informed him.
Ralph found Jack's eyes over the little boy's head. Ralph was tired. He was frustrated. Jack was becoming more of a problem than the ally he was to Ralph at the beginning.
"No," Ralph bent down to meet Peter's eyes. He glared over at Jack, who smiled back mockingly. Jack was losing it, Ralph observed. "You misunderstood 'im, that's not what he meant" he insisted gently.
"That's exactly what I meant" Jack retaliated from behind them. "There's eight million islands out here. Why should they find this one?"
"Don't listen to him" Ralph said to Peter softly. "We will be rescued, Peter, honest."
Back at Bainbridge Military Academy, Ralph had mentored and worked with most of the boys in the squadron at one point or another. The boys who were following Jack's bad example now were mostly comprised of those who'd been in the choir with Jack. Jack was the head choir boy, and had been since his first full year at the academy. Lots of the younger boys looked up to Jack before they'd looked up to Ralph, before Ralph had outranked Jack at the end of last year. They started following Jack around the island, insisting on joining him as he continued to hunt for pigs. Jack started promising them he'd eventually catch one. Ralph was worried that he'd never actually deliver. Perhaps, eventually, the boys would realize this too and gravitate back to Ralph.