Kitabı oku: «Скотный двор / Animal Farm», sayfa 9
At the sight, several men dropped their sticks and tried to run. Panic overtook them, and the next moment all the animals together were chasing them round and round the yard. There was not an animal on the farm that did not take vengeance on them after his own fashion. Even the cat suddenly leapt off a roof onto a cowman’s shoulders and sank her claws in his neck, at which he yelled horribly. The men were glad to rush out of the yard.
All the men were gone except one. Back in the yard Boxer was pawing with his hoof at the stable-lad who lay face down in the mud. The boy did not stir.
«He is dead,» said Boxer sorrowfully. «I forgot that I was wearing iron shoes. Who will believe that I did not do this on purpose?»
«No sentimentality, comrade!» cried Snowball from whose wounds the blood was still dripping. «War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.»
«I have no wish to take life, not even human life,» repeated Boxer, and his eyes were full of tears.
«Where is Mollie?» exclaimed somebody.
Mollie in fact was missing. For a moment there was great alarm. In the end, however, they found her. She was hiding in her stall with her head buried among the hay in the manger. And when the others came back, the stable-lad, who in fact was only stunned, already recovered and ran away.
The animals now reassembled in the wildest excitement. Each was recounting his own exploits in the battle. They celebrated the victory! They ran up the flag and sang ‘Beasts of England’. The poor sheep was buried, and a hawthorn bush was planted on her grave. At the graveside Snowball made a little speech, emphasising the need for all animals to be ready to die for the Animal Farm.
The animals decided unanimously to create amilitary decoration19, «Animal Hero, First Class». Snowball and Boxer were rewarded. It consisted of a brass medal (an old horse-brass from the harness-room). There was also «Animal Hero, Second Class»: the dead sheep was rewarded posthumously.
The battle was named the Battle of the Cowshed. The animals set Mr. Jones’s gun at the foot of the Flagstaff to fire it twice a year – once on October the twelfth, the anniversary of the Battle of the Cowshed, and once on Midsummer Day, the anniversary of the Rebellion.
Chapter V
As winter drew on, Mollie became more and more troublesome. She was late for work every morning, and she complained of mysterious pains, although her appetite was excellent. She often ran away from work and went to the drinking pool, where she stood foolishly gazing at her own reflection in the water. But there were also rumours of something more serious. One day, when Mollie was flirting her long tail and chewing at a stalk of hay, Clover took her aside.
«Mollie,» she said, «I have something very serious to say to you. This morning you were looking over the hedge that divides Animal Farm from Foxwood. One of Mr. Pilkington’s men was standing on the other side of the hedge. And I saw this – he was talking to you and you were allowing him to stroke your nose. What does that mean, Mollie?»
«He didn’t! I wasn’t! It isn’t true!» cried Mollie.
«Mollie! Look at me. Do you give me your word of honour that the man was not stroking your nose?»
«It isn’t true!» repeated Mollie, but she could not look at Clover, and the next moment she galloped away into the field.
Without saying anything to the others, Clover went to Mollie’s stall and turned over the straw with her hoof. A little pile of lump sugar and several bunches of ribbon of different colours were hidden under the straw.
Three days later Mollie disappeared. For some weeks nobody saw her, then the pigeons reported that they saw her on the other side of Willingdon. She was between the shafts of a smart dogcart painted red and black, which was standing outside apublic-house20. A fat red-faced man in check breeches and gaiters, who looked like a publican21, was stroking her nose and feeding her with sugar. She had a new coat and she wore a scarlet ribbon round her forelock. She was happy, so the pigeons said. None of the animals ever mentioned Mollie again.
In January there came hard weather. The earth was like iron, and the animals could do nothing in the fields. Many meetings were held in the big barn. The pigs were planning out the work of the coming season. The pigs, who were manifestly cleverer than the other animals, will decide all questions of farm policy, though their decisions will be ratified by a majority vote.
This arrangement worked well enough – but the disputes between Snowball and Napoleon! These two disagreed at every point where disagreement was possible. If one of them suggested sowing a bigger acreage with barley, the other demanded a bigger acreage of oats. If one of them said that a field was just right for cabbages, the other declared that it was useless for anything except roots. There were violent debates between them. At the Meetings Snowball often won over the majority by his brilliant speeches, but Napoleon was better at intrigues. He was especially successful with the sheep. The sheep were often bleating «Four legs good, two legs bad», and they often interrupted the Meeting with this. It was noticed that they broke into «Four legs good, two legs bad» at crucial moments in Snowball’s speeches.
