“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 Ph[oe]bus 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 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 balls 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-class golf maniac, except the ability to play the game.  But this so far surpassed 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.