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“It was different when the fire was—”
“—up there.”
Ralph stood up, feeling curiously defenseless with the darkness pressing in.
“Let the fire go then, for tonight.”
He led the way to the first shelter, which still stood, though battered. The bed leaves lay within, dry and noisy to the touch. In the next shelter a littlun was talking in his sleep. The four biguns crept into the shelter and burrowed under the leaves. The twins lay together and Ralph and Piggy at the other end. For a while there was the continual creak and rustle of leaves as they tried for comfort.
“Piggy.”
“Yeah?”
“All right?”
“S'pose so.”
At length, save for an occasional rustle, the shelter was silent. An oblong of blackness relieved with brilliant spangles hung before them and there was the hollow sound of surf on the reef. Ralph settled himself for his nightly game of supposing....
Supposing they could be transported home by jet, then before morning they would land at that big airfield in Wiltshire. They would go by car; no, for things to be perfect they would go by train; all the way down to Devon and take that cottage again. Then at the foot of the garden the wild ponies would come and look over the wall....
Ralph turned restlessly in the leaves. Dartmoor was wild and so were the ponies. But the attraction of wildness had gone.
His mind skated to a consideration of a tamed town where savagery could not set foot. What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?
All at once, Ralph was dancing round a lamp standard. There was a bus crawling out of the bus station, a strange bus....
“Ralph! Ralph!”
“What is it?”
“Don't make a noise like that—”
“Sorry.”
From the darkness of the further end of the shelter came a dreadful moaning and they shattered the leaves in their fear. Sam and Eric, locked in an embrace, were fighting each other.
“Sam! Sam!”
“Hey—Eric!”
Presently all was quiet again.
Piggy spoke softly to Ralph.
“We got to get out of this.”
“What d`you mean?”
“Get rescued.”
For the first time that day, and despite the crowding blackness, Ralph sniggered.
“I mean it,” whispered Piggy. “If we don't get home soon we’ll be barmy.”
“Round the bend.”
“Bomb happy.”
“Crackers.”
Ralph pushed the damp tendrils of hair out of his eyes.
“You write a letter to your auntie.”
Piggy considered this solemnly.
“I don't know where she is now. And I haven't got an envelope and a stamp. An' there isn't a mailbox. Or a postman.”
The success of his tiny joke overcame Ralph. His sniggers became uncontrollable, his body jumped and
Piggy rebuked him with dignity.
“I haven't said anything all that funny.”
Ralph continued to snigger though his chest hurt. His twitchings exhausted him till he lay, breathless and woebegone, waiting for the next spasm. During one of these pauses he was ambushed by sleep.
“Ralph! You been making a noise again. Do be quiet, Ralph—because.”
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