"Now," said Bentham T. Tassifer, with an air of defiance, "we'll see!" He was a bandy-legged little man, whose abdominal structure suggested a concealed melon.
Red-faced and perspiring, he arose from where he had been teeing up his ball for the fifth hole, flourished his driver aggressively, and, adjusting his knobby calves at a carefully calculated angle, went through a variety of extraordinary contortions with his wrists and forearms. Outwardly, he was the personification of pugnacious assurance. He had every appearance of being absolutely certain of his ability to swat that small white sphere to a distance of not less than three hundred yards and plumb onto the next green. Inwardly, however, Bentham had no confidence in himself at all. He knew that the chances were just nineteen out of twenty that he would slice into the bushes at about sixty yards and lose a brand new "baby bramble." But, as befitted a deputy assistant solicitor at the Department of Justice, he allowed no hint of nervousness to betray itself, looked sternly at Judson, his lank opponent, and remarked again, "Now we'll see!"
Nobody but Mrs. Tassifer knew what a sucking dove Bentham really was in his inmost soul. The world at large regarded him as a rather terrible squatty person who had a chip on each shoulder, for he made almost as much noise insisting on his rights as a native Briton. In point of fact, he thought he looked like Stephen A. Douglas or, in lieu of that, like Robert G. Ingersoll possibly. But that was all on the exterior. And now, as he addressed the ball, he kept inwardly repeating to himself: "Eye on the ball—head steady—follow through. Eye on the ball—head steady—follow through." Then, summoning all his resources, he swung his driver over his shoulder and was about to bring it down with the impetus of a Travis, when he thought he saw a black gnat dancing in front of his eyes.
"Tush!" he exclaimed, waving with his left hand. "These flies!"
"Aren't any flies," retorted his friend Judson, from the Department of Agriculture, "in October."
"Well, I thought there was," said Bentham, dressing at the ball once more. "There it is again!" he added, suddenly striking at something. Then he fastened his eyes on the horizon. "You're right! It isn't here—it's there! See it?" And he pointed out into the blue of space with his driver.
"Flying machine," announced Judson. "Watch it go!"
The black speck was coming swiftly toward them and growing larger every instant.
"It's like a doughnut—round with a hole in the middle!" cried Bentham. "I believe that fellow intends to land here. What impudence!"
By this time, both of them could see plainly the details of the machine which, constructed apparently of polished steel, flashed dizzily in the sunlight as it shot over the golf-course. It was evidently a hollow cylinder shaped like an anchor-ring or life-preserver, about seventy-five feet in diameter, with a tripod superstructure carrying, at its apex, a thimble-shaped device, the open mouth of which pointed downward through the middle of the machine. A faint yellow glare—a sort of luminous vapor—hovered below this gigantic car, which sailed through the air with a deep humming sound.