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“I wanted—to go to a place—a place I know.”
“What place?”
“Just a place I know. A place in the jungle.”
He hesitated.
Jack settled the question for them with that contempt in his voice that could sound so funny and so final.
“He was taken short”
With a feeling of humiliation on Simon's behalf, Ralph took back the conch, looking Simon sternly in the face as he did so.
“Well, don't do it again. Understand? Not at night There's enough silly talk about beasts, without the litthlus seeing you gliding about like a—”
The derisive laughter that rose had fear in it and condemnation. Simon opened his mouth to speak but Ralph had the conch, so he backed to his seat
When the assembly was silent Ralph turned to Piggy.
“Well, Piggy?”
“There was another one. Him.”
The littlums pushed Percival forward, then left him by himself. He stood knee-deep in the central grass, looking at his hidden feet, trying to pretend he was in a tent Ralph remembered another small boy who had stood like this and he flinched away from the memory. He had pushed the thought down and out of sight, where only some positive reminder like this could bring it to the surface. There had been no further numberings of the littluns, partly because there was no means of insuring that all of them were accounted for and partly because Ralph knew the answer to at least one question Piggy had asked on the mountain-top. There were little boys, fair, dark, freckled, and all dirty, but their faces were all dreadfully free of major blemishes. No one had seen the mulberry-colored birthmark again. But that time Piggy had coaxed and bullied. Tacitly admitting that he remembered the unmentionable, Ralph nodded to Piggy.
“Go on. Ask him.”
Piggy knelt, holding the conch.
“Now then. What's your name?”
The small boy twisted away into his tent Piggy turned helplessly to Ralph, who spoke sharply.
“What's your name?”
Tormented by the silence and the refusal the assembly broke into a chant.
“What's your name? What's your name?”
“Quiet!”
Ralph peered at the child in the twilight
“Now tell us. What's your name?”
“Percival Wemys Madison, The Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants, telephone, telephone, tele-“
As if this information was rooted far down in the springs of sorrow, the littlun wept. His face puckered, the tears leapt from his eves, his mouth opened till they could see a square black hole. At first he was a silent effigy of sorrow; but then the lamentation rose out of him, loud and sustained as the conch.
“Shut up, you! Shut up!”
Percival Wemys Madison would not shut up. A spring had been tapped, far beyond the reach of authority or even physical intimidation. The crying went on, breath after breath, and seemed to sustain him upright as if he were nailed to it.
“Shut up! Shut up!”
For now the littluns were no longer silent. They were reminded of their personal sorrows; and perhaps felt themselves to share in a sorrow that was universal. They began to cry in sympathy, two of them almost as loud as Percival.
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