Jeff stood there naked, looking at the dazzling beach and the water.
He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood and not yet
old enough for adolescence to have made him awkward. You could see now that he might make a boxer, as far as
width and heaviness of shoulders went, but there was a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no
devil.
He turned neatly on to his feet, jumped down to the beach, knelt and swept a double armful of sand into a pile
against his chest. Then he sat back and looked at the water with bright, excited eyes.
"Jeff" the fat and big boy Jeff just had wrestled called him, dressed in a thick bear suit.
He wiped his glasses and adjusted them on his button nose. The frame had made a deep, pink "V" on the bridge.
He looked critically at Jeff's golden body and then down at his own clothes. He laid a hand on the end of a
zipper that extended down his chest. Then he opened the zipper with decision and pulled the whole costume over
his head.
"There!"
Jeff looked at him sidelong and said nothing. 'This sounds awfully familiar...'
"I expect we'll want to know all their names," said the fat boy, "and make a list. We ought to have a
meeting."
Jeff did not take the hint so the fat boy was forced to continue.
"I don't care what they call me," he said confidentially, "so long as they don't call me what they used to
call me at school."
Ralph was faintly interested.
"What was that?"
The fat boy glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward Jeff.
He whispered.
"They used to call me 'Cubby'"
Jeff shrieked with laughter. He jumped up. "Cubby! Cubby!" Jeff danced out into the hot air of the beach and
then returned as a fighter-plane, with wings swept back, and machine-gunned Cubby. "Sche-aa-ow!" He dived in
the sand at Cubby's feet and lay there laughing. 'Now I remember... shit I'm in the beginning of Lord of the
Flies... acting like a moron... still I'm not a little kid. And I remember this part, is not that bad.'
He hastened back into the forest. Jeff stood up and trotted along to the right. There in a cleareance he found
a most placid pool of water, it was clear to the bottom and bright with the efflorescence of tropical weed and
coral. A school of tiny, glittering fish flicked hither and thither. The incredible pool, which clearly was
only invaded by the sea at high tide, was so deep at one end as to be dark green. Jeff inspected the whole
thirty yards carefully and then plunged in. The water was warmer than his blood and he might have been
swimming in a huge bath.
When he got out...