"Then there would come a day when the cruiser was away at Cape Helles. The destroyer would be engaged on important business elsewhere and the captive balloon deflated. Perhaps the aeroplane man was away dropping bombs on Maidos. And there would be a score or two of our chaps in swimming after a fortnight in the firing line without so much as a rinse. Then Anafarta Anne would pop out of her hole and send a great shrapnel shell that would spread a spray of bullets over a piece of water a hundred yards long by fifty wide. Our chaps would be lucky if they ducked in time and could swim under water to the beach. They would come out nearly black in the face, but not so strangled that they could not find breath to curse the name of Anafarta Anne.
"One day Anne went a bit too far. There was a mule team coming up from the beach with water. There were five mules with Indian drivers and two kerosene tins to each mule. The water was pukka Malta water sealed in the kerosene tins and was most important water indeed, as it turned out. You see, it was specially reserved for the sacred ablutions of the Gurkhas. Well, this Anafarta Anne had no more sense than to drop a high-explosive shell right on top of the procession. Up in air went three good mules and every drop of the water was wasted. I believe there was a mule-man or two missing as well, but I never counted them myself.
"The boss mule-driver was an excitable Punjabi who loved mules like a pawnbroker loves diamonds. He came leaping down to the Gurkha camp, making a chattering noise like the whole Turkish army, and the first Gurkha he ran into was Diddly. What he said I couldn't tell you, but he must have rubbed it in about the Gurkhas' holy water, for Diddly got very serious and very busy. He got all his push together and sent somebody for the white officer sahib. In his presence they all drew their big knives and nicked one another's thumbs and swore an oath. They swore they would put an end to Anafarta Anne. So much I gathered from Diddly afterwards.
"Naturally there was a good deal of interest among our chaps to see what would happen. Fellows like Shorty Shaw said it was all nonsense for a pack of Gurkhas to expect to do what everybody else had failed in. It seemed a tall order, and some of the boys betted long odds against the thing ever being done that way. I don't mind telling you that I had my little bit at five to one on little old Diddly. He gave me confidence somehow or other; I don't know why.