Повелитель мух / Lord of the Flies

Boys who felt the evening wind on their damp faces paused to enjoy the freshness of it and then found they were exhausted. They flung themselves down in the shadows that lay among the shattered rocks.

The beard of flame diminished quickly; then the pile fell inwards with a soft, cindery sound, and sent a great tree of sparks upwards that leaned away and drifted downwind. The boys lay, panting like dogs.

Ralph raised his head off his forearms.

“That was no good.”

Roger spat efficiently into the hot dust.

“What d’you mean?”

“There wasn’t any smoke. Only flame.”

Piggy had settled himself in a space between two rocks, and sat with the conch on his knees.

“We haven’t made a fire,” he said, “what’s any use. We couldn’t keep a fire like that going, not if we tried.”

“A fat lot you tried,” said Jack contemptuously. “You just sat.”

“We used his specs,” said Simon, smearing a black cheek with his forearm. “He helped that way.”

“I got the conch,” said Piggy indignantly.

“You let me speak!”

“The conch doesn’t count on top of the mountain,” said Jack, “so you shut up.”

“I got the conch in my hand.”

“Put on green branches,” said Maurice. “That’s the best way to make smoke.”

“I got the conch—”

Jack turned fiercely.

“You shut up!”

Piggy wilted. Ralph took the conch from him and looked round the circle of boys.

“We’ve got to have special people for looking after the fire.

Any day there may be a ship out there”—he waved his arm at the taut wire of the horizon—“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.”

They assented. Piggy opened his mouth to speak, caught Jack’s eye and shut it again.

Jack held out his hands for the conch and stood up, holding the delicate thing carefully in his sooty hands.

“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.”

He turned to Ralph.

“Ralph, I’ll split up the choir—my hunters, that is—into groups, and we’ll be responsible for keeping the fire going—”

This generosity brought a spatter of applause from the boys, so that Jack grinned at them, then waved the conch for silence.