Повелитель мух / Lord of the Flies

He breathed noisily when he had finished.

“Needed that.”

Simon spoke from inside the shelter.

“Up a bit.”

Ralph turned to the shelter and lifted a branch with a whole tiling of leaves.

The leaves came apart and fluttered down. Simon’s contrite face appeared in the hole.

“Sorry.”

Ralph surveyed the wreck with distaste.

“Never get it done.”

He flung himself down at Jack’s feet. Simon remained, looking out of the hole in the shelter. Once down, Ralph explained.

“Been working for days now. And look!”

Two shelters were in position, but shaky. This one was a ruin.

“And they keep running off. You remember the meeting? How everyone was going to work hard until the shelters were finished?”

“Except me and my hunters—”

“Except the hunters. Well, the littluns are—”

He gesticulated, sought for a word.

“They’re hopeless. The older ones aren’t much better. D’you see? All day I’ve been working with Simon.

No one else. They’re off bathing, or eating, or playing.”

Simon poked his head out carefully.

“You’re chief. You tell ’em off.”

Ralph lay flat and looked up at the palm trees and the sky.

“Meetings. Don’t we love meetings? Every day. Twice a day. We talk.” He got on one elbow. “I bet if I blew the conch this minute, they’d come running. Then we’d be, you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set.

When the meeting was over they’d work for five minutes, then wander off or go hunting.”

Jack flushed.

“We want meat.”

“Well, we haven’t got any yet. And we want shelters. Besides, the rest of your hunters came back hours ago. They’ve been swimming.”

“I went on,” said Jack. “I let them go. I had to go on. I—”

He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up.

“I went on. I thought, by myself—”

The madness came into his eyes again.

“I thought I might—kill.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I thought I might.”

Some hidden passion vibrated in Ralph’s voice.

“But you haven’t yet.”

His invitation might have passed as casual, were it not for the undertone.

“You wouldn’t care to help with the shelters, I suppose?”

“We want meat—”

“And we don’t get it.”

Now the antagonism was audible.