"Pretty long holes, I should say," said I. "Mars is four thousand miles round, isn't it?"

"You _are_ an earth-worm," he retorted, forgetting his place wholly in his scorn for my picayune ideas. "Calling a paltry four thousand miles long--why, you can play around that links in two hours and a half."

"Indeed?" said I. "And how long may your hours be? Everything here is on such a magnificent scale, I suppose one of your hours is about equal to one of our decades."

"Oh no," said Adonis. "It isn't that way at all. Fact is, we make our hours to suit ourselves. I am merely reckoning on a basis that you would comprehend. I meant two and a half of your hours. Any moderately expert player can play the Mars links in that time. Take the first hole, for instance--it's only two hundred and fifty miles long."

"Really--is that all!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, growing sarcastic. "A drive, two bra.s.sies, an approach, and forty puts, I presume?"

"For a duffer, perhaps," retorted Adonis. "Willie Ph[oe]bus does it in six. A seventy-five-mile drive, a seventy-mile bra.s.sie, a loft over the ca.n.a.l for twenty-five miles, a forty-five-mile cleak, a thirty-mile approach, and--"

"A dead easy put of five miles!" I put in, making a pretence of being no longer astonished.

"That's the idea," said Adonis. "Of course, everybody can't do it," he added. "And bogie for that hole is really seven. Willie Ph[oe]bus played too well for a gentleman, so we made him a professional. He'll give you lessons for a thousand dollars an hour, if you want him to."

"Thanks," said I. "I'll think about it. Can he teach me how to drive a ball seventy-five miles?"

"That depends on your capacity," said Adonis. "Some of the best players frequently drive seventy-five miles--the record is ninety-six miles, made by Jove himself. Willie taught him."

"For Heaven's sake!" I cried, losing my self-poise for an instant.

"What do you drive with? Olympian Gatling guns?"

"Not at all," replied Adonis. "We use one of our regular drivers--the best is called the 'celestial catapult.' Ph[oe]bus sells 'em at the Caddie House for five hundred dollars apiece. If you strike a ball fair and square with the 'celestial catapult,' and neither pull nor slice, it can't help going forty miles, anyhow."

"And how, may I ask, do the caddies find a ball that goes seventy-five miles?"

"They don't have to. All our b.a.l.l.s are self-finding," said Adonis.

"The ball in use now is a recent invention of Vulcan's. They cost twelve hundred dollars a dozen. They are made of liquefied electricity. We take the electric current, liquefy it, then solidify it, then mould it into the form of a sphere. Inside we place a little gong, that begins to ring as soon as the ball lands. The electricity in it is what makes it fly so rapidly and so far, and even you mortals know the principle of the electric bell."

"Oh, indeed we do," said I, pulling at my mustache nervously. I was beginning to get excited over this celestial golf. On earth I have all of the essentials of a first-cla.s.s golf maniac, except the ability to play the game. But this so far surpa.s.sed anything I had ever seen or imagined before that I was growing too keen over it for comfort. I was in real need of having my spirits curbed, so I ventured to inquire after a phase of the game that has always dampened my ardor in the past--the caddie service. I did not expect that this could attain perfection even in Olympus, and I was not far wrong.

"You must have pretty lively caddies," I threw out.

Adonis sighed. "You'd think so, but that's where we are always in trouble. We've tried various schemes, but they haven't any of 'em worked well. At first we took our own Olympian boys. We got the mother of the Gracchi to lend us her offspring, but they weren't worth a rap.

Then we hired forty little devils from Hades, and we had to send them back inside of a week. They were regular little imps. They were cutting up monkey shines all the time, and waggled their horrid little tails so constantly that Jove himself couldn't keep his eye on the ball--and the language they used was something frightful. You couldn't trust them to clean your clubs, because there wasn't any power anywhere that could keep them from running off with 'em; and in the matter of b.a.l.l.s, they'd steal every blessed one they could lay their hands on. We finally had to employ cherubs. We've about sixty of 'em on hand now all the time, and they come as near being perfect as you could expect. Ever see a cherub?"

"Only in pictures," said I. "They're just heads with wings, aren't they?"

"Yes," said Adonis, "and, having no bodies, they're seldom in the way, and some of the best of 'em can fly almost as fast as the ball."

"How do they carry the bags?" I asked, much interested.

"They hang 'em about their necks, just above their wings," Adonis explained, "but even they are not perfect. They fly very carelessly, and often, in swooping about the sky, drop your clubs out of the bag and smash 'em; and they all look so infernally alike that you can never tell your own caddy from the other fellow's, which is sometimes very confusing."

"Still," I put in, "a caddie with no pockets is a very safe person to intrust with golf b.a.l.l.s."

"That's very true," said Adonis, "and I suppose the cherubs make as good caddies as we can expect. Caddies will be caddies, and that's the end of it. You can't expect a caddie to do just right any more than you can expect water to flow uphill. There are certain immutable laws of the universe which are as unchangeable in Olympus as on earth or in Hades. Ice is cold, fire is hot, water is wet, and caddies are caddies."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLYMPIAN LINKS]

"Very true," said I, reflecting upon the ways of "Some Caddies I have Met." "What do you pay them a round?"

"One hundred and twenty-five dollars," said Adonis.

"Cheap enough," said I. "But tell me, Adonis," I continued, "who is your amateur champion?"

"Jupiter, of course," said Adonis, with an impatient shake of his head. "He's champion of everything. It's one of his prerogatives. We don't any of us dare win a cup from him for fear he'll use his power to destroy us. That is one of the features of this Olympian life that is not pleasant--though, for goodness' sake, don't say I told you!

He'd send me into perpetual exile if he knew I'd spoken that way.

He's threatened to make me Governor-General of the Dipper half a dozen times already for things I've said, and I have to be very careful, or he'll do it."

"An unpleasant post, that?"

"Well," he said, "I don't exactly know how to compare it so that you would understand precisely. I should say, however, it would be about as agreeable as being United States amba.s.sador to Borneo."

"I'll never tell, Adonis," said I, "and I'm very much obliged to you for our pleasant chat. Your description of the links has interested me hugely. If I could afford a game at your prices, I think I'd play."

"Oh, as for that," said Adonis, laughing, "don't let that bother you.

Whenever you want to pay a bill here all you have to do is to press the cash b.u.t.ton on the teleseme over there, and they'll send the money up from the office."

"But how shall I ever repay the office?" I cried.

"Press the b.u.t.ton to the left of it, and they'll send you up a receipt in full," he replied.

"You mean to say that this hotel is run--" I began.

"On the Olympian plan," interrupted the valet with a low bow. "All bills here are of that pleasing variety known as 'Self-paying.'"

With which comforting a.s.surance Adonis left me, and I started for the dining-room, my appet.i.te considerably whetted by the idea of a game of golf over links four thousand miles in length with b.a.l.l.s that could be driven fifty or sixty miles, and cherubs for caddies, at no cost to myself whatsoever.

VI

In the Dining-Room

As I emerged from the door of my room into the hall, I found a small sedan-chair, of highly ornamental make, awaiting my convenience, carried upon the shoulders of two diminutive boys, who were as black, and shone as l.u.s.trously, as a bit of highly polished ebony. I had never seen their like before, save in an occasional bit of statuary in Italy, wherein marbles of differing hue and shade had been ingeniously used by the sculptor to give color to his work. The boys themselves, as I have said, were of polished ebony hue, while the breech-cloths which formed their sole garment were of purest alabaster white. Upon their heads were turbans of pink. They grinned broadly as I came out, and opened the door of the chair for me.

"Dis way fo' de dinin'-room, sah," said one of them, showing a set of ivory teeth that dazzled my eyes.

I thanked him and entered the chair. When I was seated, I turned to the little chap.

"What particular G.o.d do you happen to be, Sambo?" I asked. It was probably not the most reverent way to put it, but in a community like Olympus G.o.ds are really at a discount, and the black particle was so like a small pickaninny I used to know in Savannah that I could not address him as if he were Jupiter himself.

"Ma.s.sy me, ma.s.sa," he returned, his smile nearly cutting the top of his head off, reaching as it did around to the back of his ears. "I ain' no gord. I'se jess one o' dese low-down or'nary toters. Me an'

him totes folks roun' de hotel."