CHAPTER SIX

During the night, a dead parachutist falls onto the island and is carried by shifting winds to the mountaintop, where its parachute makes the corpse seem to sit up and bow when the breeze tugs the lines. Unaware, the boys sleep.

Before dawn, twins Sam and Eric awaken to tend the signal fire. In the gusts and flicker, they glimpse the parachutist’s shape and hear the parachute fabric, convincing themselves they have seen the beast. Terrified and scratched by thorns as they flee, they rouse Ralph, Piggy, and the others with a breathless account of claws, teeth, and eyes.

At daybreak, Ralph quietly calls an assembly. Sam and Eric, speaking as one, repeat their sighting, and the group’s fear spikes. Jack seizes on the moment, proposing a “real hunt” and sneering at Ralph’s caution. Piggy suggests staying near the shelters, but Ralph rejects being penned in, insisting that rescue depends on the signal fire. Jack derides the conch’s authority, but Ralph regains the boys by pressing the priority of the fire and asking where on the island remains unexplored.

They agree to search the rocky tail of the island first. Leaving Piggy with the littluns, the biguns follow the shore terrace. Ralph, despite fear, asserts his role and goes out onto the narrow causeway toward Castle Rock, with Jack joining. They find tumbled pink rock, scant water, and no beast. Jack is thrilled by the site’s defensibility and imagines a fort and rolling boulders onto enemies, while Ralph dismisses it as useless for living and rescue.

When the others swarm across, the boys grow excited and topple a huge rock into the sea. Ralph, increasingly frustrated, repeats the need for “smoke” and a lit signal, warning there may be a ship. Some clamor to stay and build a fort, but Ralph, as chief, forces the decision: they will leave Castle Rock, go toward the mountain where Sam and Eric saw the “beast,” and relight the fire.