← The singing of this song threw the animals into the wildest excitement. Almost before Major had reached the end, they had begun singing it for themselves. 🔊
← And so, almost before they knew what was happening, the Rebellion had been successfully carried through: Jones was expelled, and the Manor Farm was theirs. 🔊
← Then they sang Beasts of England from end to end seven times running, and after that they settled down for the night and slept as they had never slept before. 🔊
← It was as though they had never seen these things before, and even now they could hardly believe that it was all their own. 🔊
← "Comrades," said Snowball, "it is half−past six and we have a long day before us. 🔊
← Their relations with the human race were now not quite the same as they had been before. 🔊
← But it was some minutes before they could fully take it in. They all remembered, or thought they remembered, how they had seen Snowball charging ahead of them at the Battle of the Cowshed, how he had rallied and encouraged them at every turn, and how he had not paused for an instant even when the pellets from Jones's gun had wounded his back. 🔊
← They were all slain on the spot. And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones. 🔊
← Having got there, he collected two successive loads of stone and dragged them down to the windmill before retiring for the night. 🔊
← There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. 🔊
← The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times over−very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before. 🔊
← To rebuild the windmill, with walls twice as thick as before, and to finish it by the appointed date, together with the regular work of the farm, was a tremendous labour. 🔊
← But at this moment the four pigeons, who had been sent out on the day before, returned, one of them bearing a scrap of paper from Pilkington. 🔊
← And in rebuilding it they could not this time, as before, make use of the fallen stones. 🔊
← "Then we have won back what we had before," said Boxer. "That is our victory," said Squealer. 🔊
← But if there were hardships to be borne, they were partly offset by the fact that life nowadays had a greater dignity than it had had before. 🔊
← "I was at his bedside at the very last. And at the end, almost too weak to speak, he whispered in my ear that his sole sorrow was to have passed on before the windmill was finished. 🔊
← YEARS passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs. 🔊
← But before doing so, there were a few words that he felt it incumbent upon him to say. 🔊
← There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. 🔊