ACHILLES COAL CART.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16311, 11 December 1918, Page 6

ACHILLES COAL CART.

(By Lieut. K. N. Colvilo.) Second-Lieutenant James Macdonald, of the 8.A.F., was very well pleased with life. He had just come to France to join the fighting squadron in the 8.E.F., and had already within a week of his arrival, successfully carried out his first patrol over the German lines. He was -well fed, well housed in a large hut of which he owned a. quarter, and his moss nates were already his besom friends. There was only one fly in his ointment. He had no coal shovel and it was winter.

There was an excellent stove in his hut and there never seemed to be any real shortage of coal, though the quartet master was always urging economy and warning them of the sad tilings that might happen if they weren’t more careful. But James had no shovel to put the coal on with, and it bothered him having either to get his hands dirty in putting it on with them, or shaking a lot of it on to the floor by trying to jerk it on out of the coal box. So James, -who, when he wasn t flying, lived in his own camp in a state of gloriously comfortable deshabille, put on his walking-out clothes and sallied forth into the neighbouring town. It was a little town, but it was. perched on a hill and had a fine square with a fine old church in it, and pretty nearly all the streets were cobbled. James enjoyed strolling about the town and looking in the shop windows, though their stock would not hare been thought much of in any of the shops on Princess Street in his Canadian home-town. But when you are in Franc© there is an attraction about any old sort of a shop window, and James, as I have said, was feeling pleased with life. A heavy howitzer battery came rumbling through tho tunnel by which you entered the town, making a terrible din on those cobbles, and there were a good many troops about the streets. Too many, in fact, for James got very tired of acknowledging salutes. . There were children in the streets, too. In particular there was on© called Achille. He know the child’s name was Achille, because maman kept on putting her head round the corner of a doorway just along the alley and calling “Achille, Achille, vieus ici!” But Achille was busy pinking a mud dam to the gutter, carrying his mud from all over the street, and showed no sign of complying with his mother’s request. But what James particularly noticed was how very unlike the Great Achilles or Hector or any other big warrior the child was. A little further down tho road James saw a hardware store. It also sold glass goods, and children’s toys, and several other lines; but till pots and pans were the chief things displayed in tho window. So ho went in to buy a coal shovel. flow James was not a very expert French linguist and for the life of him he couldn’t reuiember what was the French for a shovel, so he just said “hon jour’’ to Madam© and asked for “something for tho coal”—“qnelque, chose pour le charbon.” Then as she looked uncomprehending he added “pour mettre le charbon,” and began to perform tho movements of one who shovels coal. But still she seemed not to grasp what it was he wanted, so he repeated the whole phrase again and the accompanying gesture, and added “only a small one, un tout petit.” For a moment the blankness remained, then suddenly madame's face lighted up, she disappeared into the hack part of the shop and in a minute or two returnedwith a toy-horse and a coal-cart, which she rapturously thrust upon James, assuring him that tho outfit, among other things, was “tres solidc.” James, being better off for francs than for French phrases, accepted the unasked for equipage and walked off with it under his arm. And there was Achille still carrying mud from all over the street to his miniature Assouan. And behold the same Achille, two minutes later, a full-fledlged contractor, with his own cart and horse; while James went back to camp, where ho got his mechanic to fashion him an excellent coal shovel out of an old 18pr. cartridge case.