The Clicking of Cuthbert

this. Will you please read him extracts when you see him getting

nervous? We went through the book last night and marked all the

passages in blue pencil which might prove helpful. You will see notes

against them in the margin, showing when each is supposed to be used."

It was a small favour to ask. I took the book and gripped her hand

silently. Then I joined Alexander and Mitchell on the tenth tee.

Mitchell was still continuing his speculations regarding the Greens

Committee.

"The hole after this one," he said, "used to be a short hole. There was

no chance of losing a ball. Then, one day, the wife of one of the

Greens Committee happened to mention that the baby needed new shoes, so

now they've tacked on another hundred and fifty yards to it. You have

to drive over the brow of a hill, and if you slice an eighth of an inch

you get into a sort of No Man's Land, full of rocks and bushes and

crevices and old pots and pans. The Greens Committee practically live

there in the summer. You see them prowling round in groups, encouraging

each other with merry cries as they fill their sacks. Well, I'm going

to fool them today. I'm going to drive an old ball which is just

hanging together by a thread. It'll come to pieces when they pick it

up!"

Golf, however, is a curious game--a game of fluctuations. One might

have supposed that Mitchell, in such a frame of mind, would have

continued to come to grief. But at the beginning of the second nine he

once more found his form. A perfect drive put him in position to reach

the tenth green with an iron-shot, and, though the ball was several

yards from the hole, he laid it dead with his approach-putt and holed

his second for a bogey four. Alexander could only achieve a five, so

that they were all square again.

The eleventh, the subject of Mitchell's recent criticism, is certainly

a tricky hole, and it is true that a slice does land the player in

grave difficulties. Today, however, both men kept their drives

straight, and found no difficulty in securing fours.

"A little more of this," said Mitchell, beaming, "and the Greens

Committee will have to give up piracy and go back to work."

The twelfth is a long, dog-leg hole, bogey five. Alexander plugged

steadily round the bend, holing out in six, and Mitchell, whose second

shot had landed him in some long grass, was obliged to use his niblick.

He contrived, however, to halve the hole with a nicely-judged

mashie-shot to the edge of the green.

Alexander won the thirteenth. It is a three hundred and sixty yard

hole, free from bunkers. It took Alexander three strokes to reach the

green, but his third laid the ball dead; while Mitchell, who was on in

two, required three putts.

"That reminds me," said Alexander, chattily, "of a story I heard.

Friend calls out to a beginner, 'How are you getting on, old man?' and

the beginner says, 'Splendidly. I just made three perfect putts on the

last green!'"

Mitchell did not appear amused. I watched his face anxiously. He had

made no remark, but the missed putt which would have saved the hole had

been very short, and I feared the worst. There was a brooding look in

his eye as we walked to the fourteenth tee.

There are few more picturesque spots in the whole of the countryside

than the neighbourhood of the fourteenth tee. It is a sight to charm

the nature-lover's heart.

But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man being a

whole-hearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and

romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a

nasty patch of rough from which he must divert his ball. The cry of the

birds, wheeling against the sky, is to the golfer merely something that

may put him off his putt. As a spectator, I am fond of the ravine at

the bottom of the slope. It pleases the eye. But, as a golfer, I have

frequently found it the very devil.

The last hole had given Alexander the honour again. He drove even more

deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his

ball, pawing at it with his driving-iron like a cat investigating a

tortoise. Finally he despatched it to one of the few safe spots on the

hillside. The drive from this tee has to be carefully calculated, for,

if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and roll down into the

ravine.

Mitchell addressed his ball. He swung up, and then, from immediately

behind him came a sudden sharp crunching sound. I looked quickly in the

direction whence it came. Mitchell's caddie, with a glassy look in his

eyes, was gnawing a large apple. And even as I breathed a silent

prayer, down came the driver, and the ball, with a terrible slice on

it, hit the side of the hill and bounded into the ravine.

There was a pause--a pause in which the world stood still. Mitchell

dropped his club and turned. His face was working horribly.

"Mitchell!" I cried. "My boy! Reflect! Be calm!"

"Calm! What's the use of being calm when people are chewing apples in

thousands all round you? What is this, anyway--a golf match or a

pleasant day's outing for the children of the poor? Apples! Go on, my