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“They don't smell me. They see me, I think. Something pink, under the trees.”
He smeared on the clay.
“If only I'd some green!”
He turned a halt-concealed face up to Roger and answered the incomprehension of his gaze.
“For hunting. Like in the war. You know—dazzle paint Like things trying to look like something else—” He twisted in the urgency of telling. “—lake moths on a tree trunk.”
Roger understood and nodded gravely. The twins moved toward Jack and began to protest timidly about something. Jack waved them away.
“Shut up.”
He rubbed the charcoal stick between the patches of red and white on his face.
“No. You two come with me.”
He peered at his reflection and disliked it. He bent down, took up a double handful of lukewarm water and rubbed the mess from his face. Freckles and sandy eyebrows appeared.
Roger smiled, unwillingly.
“You don't half look a mess.”
Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye-socket white, then he rubbed red over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw. He looked in the pool for his reflection, but his breathing troubled the mirror.
“Samneric. Get me a coconut. An empty one.”
He knelt, holding the shell of water. A rounded patch of sunlight fell on his face and a brightness appeared in the depths of the water. He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger. He spilt the water and leapt to his feet, laughing excitedly. Beside the pool his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them. He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling. He capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness. The face of red and white and black swung through the air and jigged toward Bill. Bill started up laughing; then suddenly he fell silent and blundered away through the bushes.
Jack rushed toward the twins.
“The rest are making a line. Come on!”
“But—”
“—we—”
“Come on! I’ll creep up and stab—”
The mask compelled them.
Ralph climbed out of the bathing pool and trotted up the beach and sat in the shade beneath the palms. His fair hair was plastered over his eyebrows and he pushed it back. Simon was floating in the water and kicking with his feet, and Maurice was practicing diving. Piggy was mooning about, aimlessly picking up things and discarding them. The rock-pools which so fascinated him were covered by the tide, so he was without an interest until the tide went back. Presently, seeing Ralph under the palms, he came and sat by him.
Piggy wore the remainders of a pair of shorts, his fat body was golden brown, and the glasses still flashed when he looked at anything. He was the only boy on the island whose hair never seemed to grow. The rest were shock-headed, but Piggy's hair still lay in wisps over his head as though baldness were his natural state and this imperfect covering would soon go, like the velvet on a young stag's antlers.
“I've been thinking,” he said, “about a clock. We could make a sundial We could put a stick in the sand, and then—”
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