The Sound of the Shell

Jack is the leader of the choir.... the other boys can be seen following his lead from the start, beginning with their group appearance at the start of the novel.

The creature was a party of boys, marching approximately in step in two parallel lines and dressed in strangely eccentric clothing. Shorts, shirts, and different garments they carried in their hands; but each boy wore a square black cap with a silver badge on it. Their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black cloaks which bore a long silver cross on the left breast and each neck was finished off with a ham-bone frill. The heat of the tropics, the descent, the search for food, and now this sweaty march along the blazing beach had given them the complexions of newly washed plums. The boy who controlled them was dressed in the same way though his cap badge was golden.

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“Isn’t there a man here?”

Ralph spoke to his back. “No. We’re having a meeting. Come and join in.”

The group of cloaked boys began to scatter from close line.

The tall boy shouted at them. “Choir! Stand still!”