“I climbed a rock,” said Ralph slowly, “and I think this is an island.”

“They’re all dead,” said Piggy, “an’ this is an island. Nobody don’t know we’re here. Your dad don’t know, nobody don t know-”

His lips quivered and the spectacles were dimmed with mist.

“We may stay here till we die.”

With that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.

“Get my clothes,” muttered Ralph. “Along there.”

He trotted through the sand, enduring the sun’s enmity, crossed the platform and found his scattered clothes. To put on a grey shirt once more was strangely pleasing. Then he climbed the edge of the platform and sat in the green shade on a convenient trunk. Piggy hauled himself up, carrying most of his clothes under his arms. Then he sat carefully on a fallen trunk near the little cliff that fronted the lagoon; and the tangled reflections quivered over him.

Presently he spoke.

“We got to find the others. We got to do something.”

Ralph said nothing. Here was a coral island. Protected from the sun, ignoring Piggy’s ill-omened talk, he dreamed pleasantly.

Piggy insisted.

“How many of us are there?”

Ralph came forward and stood by Piggy.

“I don’t know.”

Here and there, little breezes crept over the polished waters beneath the haze of heat. When these breezes reached the platform the palm fronds would whisper, so