← This was early in March. During the next three months there was much secret activity. 🔊
← They were all carrying sticks, except Jones, who was marching ahead with a gun in his hands. 🔊
← When he did appear, he was attended not only by his retinue of dogs but by a black cockerel who marched in front of him and acted as a kind of trumpeter, letting out a loud "cock−a−doodle−doo" before Napoleon spoke. 🔊
← At the appointed time the animals would leave their work and march round the precincts of the farm in military formation, with the pigs leading, then the horses, then the cows, then the sheep, and then the poultry. 🔊
← The dogs flanked the procession and at the head of all marched Napoleon's black cockerel. 🔊
← Apart from the regular work of the farm, and the rebuilding of the windmill, there was the schoolhouse for the young pigs, which was started in March. 🔊
← There was a deadly silence. Amazed, terrified, huddling together, the animals watched the long line of pigs march slowly round the yard. 🔊
← And by the time the sheep had quieted down, the chance to utter any protest had passed, for the pigs had marched back into the farmhouse. 🔊
← This was to be suppressed. There had also been a very strange custom, whose origin was unknown, of marching every Sunday morning past a boar's skull which was nailed to a post in the garden. 🔊