And what feats one can perform on a motor-car! And does. Just finished our putts on the home green at St. Andrews, and the sun going down, and up comes one of our impulsive party and says it is ordered that we go to Gullane to-night by car! Goodness! But it has to be, and in half an hour we are bowling along those Fifeshire roads, and we are ferried across from Burntisland in the gloom and run into Edinburgh. Good supper, some talk in a tone of suppressed excitement as if great adventures are afoot—as they are—and history is being made, and then we hoot-hoot away into the blackness of the night. And it is black farther on. And the blacker it is the faster that dare-devil man at the wheel makes her go. Running along roads the width of the car and stone walls on either side, while branches of trees are almost scraping the tops of our heads, and one might swear the speed-gauge has its finger on the fifty. “Mrs. Forman’s!” you say to the man beside you, to show you are not thinking of the awful risks as we dash by Musselburgh. Farther on a cap is lost in the black and windy night, but nobody complains. It is enough that all survived that terrible twist round the corner at Gosford. Aberlady! That is a fine thing to hear. “Will you stop here to-night, or come on to Gullane?” It is the end. You have indeed come through a great ordeal, and it is a great thing to be standing there in the night with your bag of clubs under your arm, and to be able to answer a greeting as it ought to be, and to let your thoughts slip away soon to the golf of the morning that is coming.
XI
But it is clear to me that the golfer who wishes to go golfing, and at the same time to live the richest and most adventurous life of the traveller, needs to take himself abroad and roam from course to course in Eastern and Central America. He will encounter many incidents that will interest and enliven him, as did the four eminent British professionals who some time since made a golfing expedition from here in the winter-time in search of Mexican treasure—dollars that were offered in open competition at San Pedro. They told me a great tale of their adventures on their return, and, as I have reason to believe, a strictly accurate one. Andrew Kirkaldy, Alexander Herd, Jack White, and Rowland Jones were the treasure-hunters, and dashing fellows they seemed as they boarded a special express at New York. Having started thence at five minutes to eleven one Wednesday morning, the train reached St. Louis at 1.30 on Thursday, having been much delayed by a wreck on the Wabash in which fourteen persons were killed and injured. This news added greatly to the discomfort of the four British golfers. They lunched at the Planters’ Hotel, went round the city, saw a performance at the theatre, and boarded the train again at half-past eight in the evening. Thereafter Messrs. Kirkaldy, Herd, White, and Jones were brought to realise some of the possibilities of travelling in through trains along the American Continent. They were in the last car of the train, and after the journey had been resumed about half an hour, there was a negative kind of happening in the form of a gradual slowing down and then a final stop of the train—or rather, as it proved, of the carriage. After waiting a little while in patience the party put their heads out of the window, and then they came to realise the horrible truth. Their carriage had become uncoupled, and the train had gone on and left them! Here was a state of things! There was no other train to get them through in time. Hundreds of pounds were to be picked up at San Pedro, and they would not be there to pick them up as they had intended. The prizes would have been a gift for them, and either “Andra” or Rowland Jones would have become an open champion of sorts at last. When these thoughts had chased each other through the minds of the great British quartette for half an hour, someone got up aloft, and, like the widow Twankey—or Sister Anne was it?—in the pantomime, said that he thought he saw something coming. Immediately afterwards he confessed he was mistaken, but he had scarcely admitted the mistake when the original statement was renewed with vigour. There was something, and eventually it was made out as a railway train. The four great British golfers were saved for Mexico, and they would yet win championships and dollars—at least they might do, as they might now prefer to put it. It seemed that after the train had parted company with its last carriage, in about a quarter of an hour somebody in the moving section happened to notice the circumstance, and remarked that it was rather curious that a carriage should be left down the line in that manner, and that there should be no fuss made. The matter being reported to the officials on the train they decided to put back and see if they could find the carriage containing, among others, the party of four great British golfers. As we have already seen, they did so. Then the whole train moved on again towards Mexico, and “Andra” went to sleep in his berth dreaming, perhaps, of the old course at home and of his doing the home hole in 2.
The four British golfers found things rather dull for the next two days, for nothing in particular happened while they were running through fifteen hundred miles of woods and prairie. On Saturday morning they got out of the train at San Antonio, Texas, in time for breakfast, and the same evening they reached Laredo, the Mexican border, where their luggage was examined. Spanish being the prevailing language, this process proved rather troublesome, especially as the officials had varying and peculiar views as to the goods on which duty should be paid. Some of the party had to pay it on their golf clubs, and others escaped. The train had hardly got going again when it was pulled up on account of an obstruction in front, and it was three hours before a further advance was made, the impediment being a freight-train which had run off the track. By this time Kirkaldy was sighing for a ride on the North British, and White was hoping that he might be allowed the privilege of making his last journey on earth on the beautiful South-Western. But there was more adventure to come.
The four great British golfers had heard awful tales of Mexicans and what they were capable of, but they understood the place was more civilised now—must be, as there was golf there. In the dead of night, while the famous quartette were wrapped in slumber, when White found himself back on to his drive, when Herd had nothing but good luck for a whole season, when Jones was pipping one Braid for the championship nearly every time, and when the fourth of the party of British golfers was doing a round on the links in Elysium in eighteen under par—there were robbers going through the car! They were real robbers, such as are commonly found on these trains in these parts. They went through the train “in the most approved style,” as it was said of them, and before the first streaks of the Mexican dawn had lit up the sky there were many men in that golfing train who were much poorer than when they went to sleep. One of the Boston amateurs going to the same tournament lost six hundred dollars, his gold watch, and trunk checks, and several others found that various sums of money belonging to them had disappeared. And how fared the four British golfers? Was it for fear of him, for respect, or for admiration, that the Mexican robber did not concern himself at all with the great British golfer? In due course they landed at Mexico City on Monday morning. The four British golfers were much impressed by the peculiar dress of the Mexicans, which they even found to be affected by the caddies. Andrew spoke a few preliminary words of greeting to the boys, but they only smiled, not understanding Scotch. But they showed a strong disposition to be good friends, an attitude which, as was subsequently discovered, was not entirely because they were great golfers. Caddies are much the same the wide world over. Of the further pursuit of the treasure by the four great British golfers, and of their many disappointments, the story has been already told.
XII
A celebrated golfer, being in one of his lighter moods, discussed with me the future association of aeroplanes and golf, and he observed that when the flying machines came they would be such boons and blessings to the golfing fraternity above all others as nobody imagined at the present time. He opined that no sooner did the flying machine become workable and reliable than every golfer who considered himself at all thorough, and took any proper care of his game, would think it his bounden duty to possess one. It would be as necessary to the playing of his true game as the nails in the soles of his boots and shoes, and he would be just as seriously handicapped without the one as the other. This was a startling proposition; but though it was a great exaggeration of an idea, the idea itself was sound, and was based on the wisest and most generally-accepted philosophy. It was submitted that the aeroplane would be very good for golf, inasmuch as it would do less towards putting a man off his game at the beginning of the day than any other form of locomotion from his place of residence to the golf course.
It is a disturbing reflection that practically everything that one does in these days that is not golf tends to injure one’s golf. Nothing has ever been discovered that with any consistency and regularity will improve it, except golf; the effect is always adverse, and perhaps this trying jealousy of the game adds something to its general fascination. Usually a more or less lengthy journey has to be made from the golfer’s home to the first tee, and it is this which is so much calculated to disturb his playing temperament. No matter how you make this journey it must be bad for your game, and the only difference between one way and another is in the degree of badness.