The ball was sitting up nicely for my second shot, and I managed to put it on the green. Thomson's, fifty yards farther on, was reclining in the worst part of a bunker which he had forgotten about.
"Well, really," he said, "there's an example of luck for you. Your ball——"
"I didn't do it on purpose," I pleaded. "Don't be angry with me."
He made two attempts to get out, and then picked his ball up. We walked in silence to the second tee.
"This time," I said, "I shall hit the sphere properly," and with a terrific swing I stroked it gently into a gorse bush. I looked at the thing in disgust and then felt my pulse. Apparently I was still quite well. Thomson, forgetting about his liver, drove a beauty. We met on the green.
"Five," I said.
"Only five?" asked Thomson suspiciously.
"Six," I said, holing a very long putt.
Thomson's health had a relapse. He took four short putts and was down in seven.
"It's really rather absurd," he said, in a conversational way, as we went to the next tee, "that putting should be so ridiculously important. Take that hole, for instance. I get on the green in a perfect three; you fluff your drive completely and get on in—what was it?"