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Piggy was speaking now with more assurance and with what, if the circumstances had- not been so serious, the others would have recognized as pleasure.

“I said we could all do without a certain person. Now I say we got to decide on what can be done. And I think I could tell you what Ralph's going to say next. The most important thing on the island is the smoke and you can't have no smoke without a fire.”

Ralph made a restless movement.

“No go, Piggy. We've got no fire. That thing sits up there—we’ll have to stay here.”

Piggy lifted the conch as though to add power to his next words.

“We got no fire on the mountain. But what's wrong with a fire down here? A fire could be built on them rocks. On the sand, even. We'd make smoke just the same.”

“That's right!”

“Smoke!”

“By the bathing pool!”

The boys began to babble. Only Piggy could have the intellectual daring to suggest moving the fire from the mountain.

“So well have the fire down here,” said Ralph. He looked about him. “We can build it just here between the bathing pool and the platform. Of course—”

He broke off, frowning, thinking the thing out, unconsciously tugging at the stub of a nail with his teeth.

“Of course the smoke won't show so much, not be seen so far away. But we needn't go near, near the—”

The others nodded in perfect comprehension. There would be no need to go near.

“We’ll build the fire now.”

The greatest ideas are the simplest Now there was something to be done they worked with passion. Piggy was so full of delight and expanding liberty in Jack's departure, so full of pride in his contribution to the good of society, that he helped to fetch wood. The wood he fetched was close at hand, a fallen tree on the platform that they did not need for the assembly, yet to the others the sanctity of the platform had protected even what was useless there. Then the twins realized they would have a fire near them as a comfort in the night and this set a few littluns dancing and clapping hands.

The wood was not so dry as the fuel they had used on the mountain. Much of it was damply rotten and full of insects that scurried; logs had to be lined from the soil with care or they crumbled into sodden powder. More than this, in order to avoid going deep into the forest the boys worked near at hand on any fallen wood no matter how tangled with new growth. The skirts of the forest and the scar were familiar, near the conch and the shelters and sufficiently friendly in daylight. What they might become in darkness nobody cared to think. They worked therefore with great energy and cheerfulness, though as time crept by there was a suggestion of panic in the energy and hysteria in the cheerfulness. They built a pyramid of leaves and twigs, branches and togs, on the bare sand by the platform. For the first time on the island, Piggy himself removed his one glass, knelt down and focused the sun on tinder. Soon there was a ceiling of smoke and a bush of yellow flame.