Animal farm / Скотный двор. Уровень 2

He pushed a stable-lad[18 - stable-lad – конюх] and stretched him lifeless in the mud.

At the sight, several men dropped their sticks and tried to run. Panic overtook them. The next moment all the animals together began to chase them round and round the yard. Every animal on the farm took vengeance on them. Even the cat suddenly leapt off a roof onto a cowman’s shoulders. She sank her claws in his neck. The cowman yelled horribly. The men were glad to rush out of the yard.

All the men were gone except one.

“He is dead,” said Boxer sorrowfully. “I forgot that I had iron shoes. Who will believe that I did not do this on purpose?”

“No sentimentality, comrade!” cried Snowball from whose wounds the blood still dripped. “War is war. The only good man is a dead man.”

“I don’t want to kill men,” repeated Boxer. His eyes were full of tears.

“Where is Mollie?” exclaimed somebody.

Indeed, where was Mollie? For a moment there was great alarm. In the end, however, they found her. She hid in her stall. Her head buried among the hay in the manger. And when the others came back, the stable-lad, who was only stunned, already recovered and ran away.

The animals now reassembled in the excitement. Everyone recounted 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.

At the graveside Snowball made a little speech. He emphasized the need for all animals to be ready to die for the Animal Farm. The animals decided unanimously to create a military decoration[19 - military decoration – воинская награда], “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 animals named this fight “The Battle of the Cowshed”. The animals set Mr. Jones’s gun at the foot of the Flagstaff to fire it twice a year. October the twelfth was the anniversary of the Battle of the Cowshed. And Midsummer Day was the anniversary of the Rebellion.

Chapter V

In winter, Mollie became more and more troublesome. She was late for work every morning, and she complained of mysterious pains.