One night at about twelve o'clock there was a loud crash in the yard, and the animals rushed out of their stalls.
It was a moonlit night.
At the foot of the end wall of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written, there lay a ladder broken in two pieces.
Squealer, temporarily stunned, was sprawling beside it, and near at hand there lay a lantern, a paintbrush and an overturned pot of white paint.
The dogs immediately made a ring round Squealer, and escorted him back to the farmhouse as soon as he was able to walk.
None of the animals could form any idea as to what this meant, except old Benjamin, who nodded his muzzle with a knowing air, and seemed to understand, but would say nothing.
But a few days later Muriel, reading over the Seven Commandments to herself, noticed that there was yet another of them which the animals had remembered wrong.
They had thought that the Fifth Commandment was
‘No animal shall drink alcohol’, but there were two words that they had forgotten.
Actually the Commandment read: ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.’
IX
Boxer's split hoof was a long time in healing.
They had started the rebuilding of the windmill the day after the victory celebrations were ended.
Boxer refused to take even a day off work, and made it a point of honour not to let it be seen that he was in pain.
In the evenings he would admit privately to Clover that the hoof troubled him a great deal.
Clover treated the hoof with poultices of herbs which she prepared by chewing them, and both she and Benjamin urged Boxer to work less hard.
‘A horse's lungs do not last for ever,’ she said to him.
But Boxer would not listen.
He had, he said, only one real ambition left – to see the windmill well under way before he reached the age for retirement.
At the beginning, when the laws of Animal Farm were first formulated, the retiring age had been fixed for horses and pigs at twelve, for cows at fourteen, for dogs at nine, for sheep at seven and for hens and geese at five.
Liberal old-age pensions had been agreed upon.
As yet no animal had actually retired on pension, but of late the subject had been discussed more and more.
Now that the small field beyond the orchard had been set aside for barley, it was rumoured that a comer of the large pasture was to be fenced off and turned into a grazing-ground for superannuated animals.
For a horse, it was said, the pension would be five pounds of corn a day and, in winter, fifteen pounds of hay, with a carrot or possibly an apple on public holidays.
Boxer's twelfth birthday was due in the late summer of the following year.
Meanwhile life was hard.
The winter was as cold as the last one had been, and food was even shorter.
Once again all rations were reduced except those of the pigs and the dogs.
A too-rigid equality in rations, Squealer explained, would have been contrary to the principles of Animalism.
In any case he had no difficulty in proving to the other animals that they were not in reality short of food, whatever the appearances might be.
For the time being, certainly, it had been found necessary to make a readjustment of rations (Squealer always spoke of it as a ‘readjustment’, never as a ‘reduction’), but in comparison with the days of Jones the improvement was enormous.
Reading out the figures in a shrill rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones's day, that they worked shorter hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer, that a larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas.
The animals believed every word of it.
Truth to tell, Jones and all he stood for had almost faded out of their memories.
They knew that life nowadays was harsh and bare, that they were often hungry and often cold, and that they were usually working when they were not asleep.
But doubtless it had been worse in the old days.
They were glad to believe so.
Besides, in those days they had been slaves and now they were free, and that made all the difference, as Squealer did not fail to point out.
There were many more mouths to feed now.
In the autumn the four sows had all littered about simultaneously, producing thirty-one young pigs between them.
The young pigs were piebald, and as Napoleon was the only boar on the farm it was possible to guess at their parentage.
It was announced that later, when bricks and timber had been purchased, a schoolroom would be built in the farmhouse garden.
For the time being the young pigs were given their instruction by Napoleon himself in the farmhouse kitchen.
They took their exercise in the garden, and were discouraged from playing with the other young animals.
About this time, too, it was laid down as a rule that when a pig and any other animal met on the path, the other animal must stand aside: and also that all pigs, of whatever degree, were to have the privilege of wearing green ribbons on their tails on Sundays.
The farm had had a fairly successful year, but was still short of money.
There were the bricks, sand and lime for the schoolroom to be purchased, and it would also be necessary to begin saving up again for the machinery for the windmill.
Then there were lamp oil and candles for the house, sugar for Napoleon's own table (he forbade this to the other pigs, on the ground that it made them fat), and all the usual replacements such as tools, nails, string, coal, wire, scrap-iron and dog biscuits.
A stump of hay and part of the potato crop were sold off, and the contract for eggs was increased to six hundred a week, so that that year the hens barely hatched enough chicks to keep their numbers at the same level.
Radons, reduced in December, were reduced again in February, and lanterns in the stalls were forbidden to save oil.