"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 ejaculated, growing sarcastic. "A drive, two brassies, an approach, and forty puts, I presume?"
"For a duffer, perhaps," retorted Adonis. "Willie Phœbus does it in six. A seventy-five-mile drive, a seventy-mile brassie, a loft over the canal 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 Phœbus 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.' Phœbus 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."