Napoleon stood sternly surveying his audience; then he uttered a high-pitched whimper.
Immediately the dogs bounded forward, seized four of the pigs by the ear and dragged them, squealing with pain and terror, to Napoleon's feet.
The pigs’ ears were bleeding, the dogs had tasted blood, and for a few moments they appeared to go quite mad.
To the amazement of everybody three of them flung themselves upon Boxer.
Boxer saw them coming and put out his great hoof, caught a dog in mid-air and pinned him to the ground. The dog shrieked for mercy and the other two fled with their tails between their legs.
Boxer looked at Napoleon to know whether he should crush the dog to death or let it go.
Napoleon appeared to change countenance, and sharply ordered Boxer to let the dog go, whereat Boxer lifted his hoof, and the dog slunk away, bruised and howling.
Presently the tumult died down.
The four pigs waited, trembling, with guilt written on every line of their countenances.
Napoleon now called upon them to confess their crimes.
They were the same four pigs as had protested when Napoleon abolished the Sunday Meetings.
Without any further prompting they confessed that they had been secretly in touch with Snowball ever since his expulsion, that they had collaborated with him in destroying the windmill, and that they had entered into an agreement with him to hand over Animal Farm to Mr Frederick.
They added that Snowball had privately admitted to them that he had been Jones's secret agent for years past.
When they had finished their confession the dogs promptly tore their throats out, and in a terrible voice Napoleon demanded whether any other animal had anything to confess.
The three hens who had been the ringleaders in the attempted rebellion over the eggs now came forward and stated that Snowball had appeared to them in a dream and incited them to disobey Napoleon's orders.
They too were slaughtered.
Then a goose came forward and confessed to having secreted six ears of corn during the last year's harvest and eaten them in the night.
Then a sheep confessed to having urinated in the drinking pool-urged to do this, so she said, by Snowball – and two other sheep confessed to having murdered an old ram, an especially devoted follower of Napoleon, by chasing him round and round a bonfire when he was suffering from a cough.
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.
When it was all over, the remaining animals, except for the pigs and dogs, crept away in a body.
They were shaken and miserable.
They did not know which was more shocking – the treachery of the animals who had leagued themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just witnessed.
In the old days there had often been scenes of bloodshed equally terrible, but it seemed to all of them that it was far worse now that it was happening among themselves.
Since Jones had left the farm, until today, no animal had killed another animal.
Not even a rat had been killed.
They had made their way onto the little knoll where the half-finished windmill stood, and with one accord they all lay down as though huddling together for warmth – Clover, Muriel, Benjamin, the cows, the sheep and a whole flock of geese and hens-every one, indeed, except the cat, who had suddenly disappeared just before Napoleon ordered the animals to assemble.
For some time nobody spoke.
Only Boxer remained on his feet.
He fidgeted to and fro, swishing his long black tail against his sides and occasionally uttering a little whinny of surprise.
Finally he said:
‘I do not understand it.
I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm.
It must be due to some fault in ourselves.
The solution, as I see it, is to work harder.
From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings.’
And he moved off at his lumbering trot and made for the quarry.
Having got there he collected two successive loads of stone and dragged them down to the windmill before retiring for the night.
The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking.
The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside.
Most of Animal Farm was within their view – the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, me ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the smoke curling from the chimneys.
It was a clear spring evening.
The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun.
Never had the farm-and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property-appeared to the animals so desirable a place.
As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears.
If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race.
These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion.
If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech.
Instead – she did not know why-they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.
There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind.