ALL that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no
effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and
those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings.
Throughout the spring and summer they worked a sixty−hour week, and in August Napoleon
announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary,
but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half. Even so, it was
found necessary to leave certain tasks undone. The harvest was a little less successful than in the
previous year, and two fields which should have been sown with roots in the early summer were not
sown because the ploughing had not been completed early enough. It was possible to foresee that the
coming winter would be a hard one.
The windmill presented unexpected difficulties. There was a good quarry of limestone on the farm,
and plenty of sand and cement had been found in one of the outhouses, so that all the materials for
building were at hand. But the problem the animals could not at first solve was how to break up the
stone into pieces of suitable size. There seemed no way of doing this except with picks and crowbars,
which no animal could use, because no animal could stand on his hind legs. Only after weeks of vain
effort did the right idea occur to somebody−namely, to utilise the force of gravity. Huge boulders, far
too big to be used as they were, were lying all over the bed of the quarry. The animals lashed ropes
round these, and then all together, cows, horses, sheep, any animal that could lay hold of the
rope−even the pigs sometimes joined in at critical moments−they dragged them with desperate
slowness up the slope to the top of the quarry, where they were toppled over the edge, to shatter to
pieces below. Transporting the stone when it was once broken was comparatively simple. The horses
carried it off in cart−loads, the sheep dragged single blocks, even Muriel and Benjamin yoked
themselves into an old governess−cart and did their share. By late summer a sufficient store of stone
had accumulated, and then the building began, under the superintendence of the pigs.
But it was a slow, laborious process. Frequently it took a whole day of exhausting effort to drag a
single boulder to the top of the quarry, and sometimes when it was pushed over the edge it failed to
break. Nothing could have been achieved without Boxer, whose strength seemed equal to that of all
the rest of the animals put together. When the boulder began to slip and the animals cried out in
despair at finding themselves dragged down the hill, it was always Boxer who strained himself
against the rope and brought the boulder to a stop. To see him toiling up the slope inch by inch, his
breath coming fast, the tips of his hoofs clawing at the ground, and his great sides matted with sweat,
filled everyone with admiration. Clover warned him sometimes to be careful not to overstrain
