Excited, they reenact the chase among themselves with a boy named Robert playing the boar. They dance, chant, and jab Robert with their spears, eventually losing sight of the fact that they are only playing a game. Beaten and in danger, Robert tries to drag himself away. The group nearly kills Robert before they remember themselves. When Robert suggests that they use a real boar in the game next time, Jack replies that they should use a littlun instead.
Ralph tries to remind everyone that they were only playing a game. Simon volunteers to return to the beach to tell Piggy and the littluns that the group will not return until late that night. Darkness falls, and Ralph proposes that they wait until morning to climb the mountain because it will be difficult to hunt the monster at night. Jack challenges Ralph to join the hunt, and Ralph finally agrees to go simply to regain his position in the eyes of the group.
Ralph, Roger, and Jack start to climb the mountain, and then Ralph and Roger wait somewhere near the top while Jack climbs alone to the summit. He returns, breathlessly claiming to have seen the monster. Ralph and Roger climb up to have a look and see a terrifying specter, a large, shadowy form with the shape of a giant ape, making a strange flapping sound in the wind.
Horrified, the boys hurry down the mountain to warn the group. The boar hunt and the game the boys play afterward provide stark reminders of the power of the human instinct toward savagery. No one knows quite what to do, but Ralph says Jack will come back once it gets dark.
Piggy is not happy with this beast situation, since he can no longer convince himself it's all been imagined. Meanwhile, Simon says that they should go up the mountain and face the beast, because it's not like they have anything else to do. No one agrees with Simon. Piggy finally comes up with the brilliant idea to build a new signal fire down by the beach instead of depending on the one up on the mountain.
The boys do so. Piggy wants to run experiments to see which of the green leaves make the most smoke when they burn. After they get it going, Piggy and Ralph look around and realize that many of the biguns—Maurice, Bill, and Roger and Robert—have disappeared. The only ones left besides Piggy and Ralph are "Samneric" and Simon. No, wait, Simon seems to be gone, too. They wonder if that crazy loon has climbed up the mountain by himself.
Cut to Simon. He's in his little meditation spot in the jungle, to sit behind the great woven mat of creepers. Meanwhile, far off along the beach, Jack and his band of brothers make pig-killing plans.
They decide that if they leave part of the pig for the beast, the beast won't bother them—you know, like an offering. Conveniently, they find a bunch of sleeping pigs. They set their sights on the biggest, fattest, mother pig, who is adorably nursing a row of piglets.
What follows is a bloody and horrific scene in which the boys drive their knives into this screaming pig. The boys stare at the dead mother pig. What now? Noting that "He isn't a prefect and we don't know anything about him" opens up speculation about Ralph's qualifications as a leader. Jack further condemns Ralph as one who talks rather than one who gets results, but Ralph himself has long ago lost patience with talk, finding it an ineffective and inappropriate tool for their situation.
His position on the usefulness of rhetoric is clear in his response to Jack's assembly. Reluctant to vote openly against Ralph, the boys sneak off to join Jack and return only when masked by their new tribal war paint, which has a liberating effect.
Jack so loses himself in this liberation that, symbolizing the casting off of all social and civil encumbrances, he abandons clothing altogether, wearing only his paint and his knife when he presents his invitation to Ralph's group.
Jack strives to be a chief in some grand fashion seen in a book or a movie, evidenced by the bizarrely formal announcement and flourish he makes Maurice and Robert perform once he has spoken to Ralph's group.
Little does he realize he himself is fulfilling the role of the beast. Wrapped up in the caveman-like activities of hunting, face-painting, and chest-beating disguised as addresses to the assembly, Jack doesn't feel the need for rescue and so distracts the other boys from keeping the fire lit.
He tells the assembly "Yes. Back at the platform, he takes a seat in front of the chief's log rather than on it and contemplates the horror of what they've done. He feels both loathing and excitement over the kill he witnessed, as Jack experienced the first time he killed a pig.
He shudders at Piggy's touch on his shoulder; humanity has let him down. Putting the pieces together, he recalls the parachuted figure drifting off the night before and Simon's shouting about a dead man on the mountain, musing that the life-like figure they saw on the mountaintop might have been the dead paratrooper rather than an actual animal-beast. Getting to the heart of the matter, he says, "I'm frightened.
Of us. Although he initially owns up to his active role in the fatal dance, as a defense mechanism, Ralph willingly takes the opportunity Piggy gives him to deny full participation, entering into a sort of functional denial. When Piggy reminds Ralph that he himself remained on the outside of the circle, Ralph tries to amend his position as well, now claiming that he, too, was on the outside of the circle and so could not have done as much damage as the boys in the inner ring.
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