The chant was audible but at that distance still wordless. Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes. 'Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!' Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away.

Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye socket white, then rubbed red over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal acro…

His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitte…

Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it at Henry- threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounded five yards to Henry's rig…

'You want a pig,' said Roger, 'like in a real hunt.' 'Or someone to pretend,' said Jack. 'You could get someone to dress up as a pig and then he could act - yo…

And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade

She has no strong white arms to fold you, But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you - Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.