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“You'll get back to where you came from.”
Simon nodded as he spoke. He was kneeling on one knee, looking down from a higher rock which he held with both hands; his other leg stretched down to Ralph's level.
Ralph was puzzled and searched Simon's face for a clue.
“It's so big, I mean—”
Simon nodded.
“All the same. You'll get back all right. I think so, anyway.”
Some of the strain had gone from Ralph's body. He glanced at the sea and then smiled bitterly at Simon.
“Got a ship in your pocket?”
Simon grinned and shook his head.
“How do you know, then?”
When Simon was still silent Ralph said curtly, “You're batty.”
Simon shook his head violently till the coarse black hair flew backwards and forwards across his face.
“No, I'm not. I just think you'll get back all right.”
For a moment nothing more was said. And then they suddenly smiled at each other.
Roger called from the coverts.
“Come and see!”
The ground was turned over near the pig-run and there were droppings that steamed. Jack bent down to them as though he loved them.
“Ralph—we need meat even if we are hunting the other thing.”
“If you mean going the right way, well hunt.”
They set off again, the hunters bunched a little by fear of the mentioned beast, while Jack quested ahead. They went more slowly than Ralph had bargained for; yet in a way he was glad to loiter, cradling his spear. Jack came up against some emergency of his craft and soon the procession stopped. Ralph leaned against a tree and at once the daydreams came swarming up. Jack was in charge of the mint and there would be time to get to the mountain—
Once, following his father from Chatham to Devonport, they had lived in a cottage on the edge of the moors. In the succession of houses that Ralph had known, this one stood out with particular clarity because after that house he had been sent away to school. Mummy had still been with them and Daddy had come home every day. Wild ponies came to the stone wall at the bottom of the garden, and it had snowed. Just behind the cottage there was a sort of shed and you could lie up there, watching the flakes swirl past You could see the damp spot where each flake died, then you could mark the first flake that lay down without melting and watch the whole ground turn white. You could go indoors when you were cold and look out of the window, past that bright copper kettle and the plate with the little blue men.
When you went to bed there was a bowl of cornflakes with sugar and cream. And the books—they stood on the shelf by the bed, leaning together with always two or three laid flat on top because he had not bothered to put them back properly. They were dog-eared and scratched. There was the bright, shining one about Topsy and Mopsy that he never read because it was about two girls; there was the one about the magician which you read with a kind of tied-down terror, skipping page twenty-seven with the awful picture of the spider; there was a book about people who had dug things up, Egyptian things; there was The Boy's Book of Trains, The Boy's Book of Ships. Vividly they came before him; he could have reached up and touched them, could feel the weight and slow slide with which The Mammoth Book for Boys would come out and slither down.... Everything was all right; everything was good-humored and friendly.
The bushes crashed ahead of them. Boys flung themselves wildly from the pig track and scrabbled in the creepers, screaming. Ralph saw Jack nudged aside and fall. Then there was a creature bounding along the pig track toward him, with tusks gleaming and an intimidating grunt. Ralph found he was able to measure the distance coldly and take aim. With the boar only five yards away, he flung the foolish wooden stick that he carried, saw it hit the great snout and hang there for a moment. The boar's note changed to a squeal and it swerved aside into the covert. The pig-run filled with shouting boys again, Jack came running back, and poked about in the undergrowth.
Through here—”
“But he’d do us!”
“Through here, I said—”
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