ep. Mutual friend Monk lookin' 'bout as
genial as a wet hen. This is goin' to be a wondherful lesson to him.
See you later." He nudged his plump cob and ambled off, whistling
merrily.

But it was Monk we saw later. He wormed his long corpse into "_Mon
Repos_" and sat on Albert Edward's bed laughing like a tickled hyena.
"Funniest thing on earth," he spluttered. "A mule strayed into my
lines t'other night and refused to leave. It was a rotten beast, a
holy terror; it could kick a fly off its ears and bite a man in half.
I don't mind admitting it played battledore and what's-'is-name with
my organisation for a day or two, but out of respect for O'Dwyer,
blackguard though he is, I ..."

"Oh, so it was O'Dwyer's mule?" Albert Edward cut in innocently.

Monk nodded hastily. "Yes, so it turned out. Well, out of respect
for O'Dwyer I looked after it as far as it would allow me, naturally
expecting he'd come over and claim it--but he didn't. On the fourth
day, after it had made a light breakfast off a bombardier's ear and
kicked a gap in a farrier, I got absolutely fed up, turned the damn
cannibal loose and gave it a cut with a whip for godspeed. It made
off due east, cavorting and snorting until it reached the tank-track;
there it stopped and picked a bit of grass. Presently along comes a
tank, proceeding to the fray, and gives the mule a poke in the rear.
The mule lashes out, catching the tank in the chest, and then goes on
with his grazing without looking round, leaving the tank for dead, as
by all human standards it should have been, of course. But instead of
being dead the box of tricks ups and gives the donk another butt and
moves on. That roused the mule properly. He closed his eyes and laid
into the tank for dear life; you could hear it clanging a mile away.

"After delivering two dozen of the best, the moke turned round to
sniff the cold corpse, but the corpse was still warm and smiling. Then
the mule went mad and set about the tank in earnest. He jabbed it in
the eye, upper-cut it on the point, hooked it behind the ear, banged
its slats, planted his left on the mark and his right on the solar
plexus, but still the tank sat up and took nourishment.

"Then the donkey let a roar out of him and closed with it; tried
the half-Nelson, the back heel, the scissors, the roll, and the
flying-mare; tried Westmoreland and Cumberland style, collar and
elbow, Cornish, Graeco-Roman, scratch-as-scratch-can and Ju-jitsu.
Nothing