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“We're in sight now.”
“All right. We'll get as close as we can.”
He followed Jack toward the castle where the ground rose slightly. On their left was at. impenetrable tangle of creepers and trees.
“Why couldn't there be something in that?”
“Because you can see. Nothing goes in or out.”
“What about the castle then?”
“Look.”
Ralph parted the screen of grass and looked out. There were only a few more yards of stony ground and then the two sides of the island came almost together so that one expected a peak of headland. But instead of this a narrow ledge of rock, a few yards wide and perhaps fifteen long, continued the island out into the sea. There lay another of those pieces of pink squareness that underlay the structure of the island. This side of the castle, perhaps a hundred feet high, was the pink bastion they had seen from the mountain-top. The rock of the cliff was split and the top littered with great lumps that seemed to totter.
Behind Ralph the tall grass had filled with silent hunters. Ralph looked at Jack.
“You’re a hunter.”
Jack went red.
“I know. All right. Something deep in Ralph spoke for him.”
“I'm chief. I’ll go. Don t argue.”
He turned to the others.
“You. Hide here. Wait for me.”
He found his voice tended either to disappear or to come out too loud. He looked at Jack.
“Do you—think?”
Jack muttered. I've been all over. It must be here.”
“I see.”
Simon mumbled confusedly: “I don't believe in the beast.”
Ralph answered him politely, as if agreeing about the weather.
“No. I suppose not.”
His mouth was tight and pale. He put back his hair very slowly.
“Well. So long.”
He forced his feet to move until they had carried him out on to the neck of land.
He was surrounded on all sides by chasms of empty air. There was nowhere to hide, even if one did not nave to go on. He paused on the narrow neck and looked down. Soon, in a matter of centuries, the sea would make an island of the castle. On the right hand was the lagoon, troubled by the open sea; and on the left—
Ralph shuddered. The lagoon had protected them from the Pacific: and for some reason only Jack had gone right down to the water on the other side. Now he saw the landsman's view of the swell and it seemed like the breathing of some stupendous creature. Slowly the waters sank among the rocks, revealing pink tables of granite, strange growths of coral, polyp, and weed. Down, down, the waters went, whispering like the wind among the heads of the forest. There was one flat rock there, spread like a table, and the waters sucking down on the four weedy sides made them seem like cliffs. Then the sleeping leviathan breathed out, the waters rose, the weed streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar. There was no sense of the passage of waves; only this minute-long fall and rise and fall.
Ralph turned away to the red cliff. They were waiting behind him in the long grass, waiting to see what he would do. He noticed that the sweat in his palm was cool now; realized with surprise that he did not really expect to meet any beast and didn't know what he would do about it if he did.
He saw that he could climb the cliff but this was not necessary. The squareness of the rock allowed a sort of plinth round it, so mat to the right, over the lagoon, one could inch along a ledge and turn the corner out of sight. It was easy going, and soon he was peering round the rock.
Nothing but what you might expect: pink, tumbled boulders with guano layered on them like icing; and a steep slope up to the shattered rocks that crowned the bastion.
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