oles.

"From here, as you lie, in how many turns of three strokes will you
run in?"

"In two," replied the great golfer.

And his adversary was not a little surprised, for from there to the
cemetery was nearly a quarter of a league.

"But how shall we see the ball?" continued the wheelwright.

"True!" said Belzebuth.

He touched the ball with his club, and it shone suddenly in the dark
like an immense glowworm.

"Fore!" cried Roger.

He hit the ball with the head of his club, and it rose to the sky like
a star going to rejoin its sisters. In three strokes it crossed
three-quarters of the distance.

"That is good!" said Belzebuth, whose astonishment redoubled. "My turn
to play now!"[23]

[23] After each three strokes the opponent has one hit back,
or into a hazard.

With one stroke of the club he drove the ball over the roofs of Coq
nearly to Maison Blanche, half a league away. The blow was so violent
that the iron struck fire against a pebble.

"Good St. Antony! I am lost, unless you come to my aid," murmured the
wheelwright of Coq.

He struck tremblingly; but, though his arm was uncertain, the club
seemed to have acquired a new vigour. At the second stroke the ball
went as if of itself and hit the door of the cemetery.

"By the horns of my grandfather!" cried Belzebuth, "it shall not be
said that I have been beaten by a son of that fool Adam. Give me my
revenge."

"What shall we play for?"

"Your soul and that of Paternostre against the souls of two golfers."

IX

The devil played up, "pressing" furiously; his club blazed at each
stroke with showers of sparks. The ball flew from Conde to
Bon-Secours, to Pernwelz, to Leuze. Once it spun away to Tournai, six
leagues from there.

It left behind a luminous tail like a comet, and the two golfers
followed, so to speak, on its track. Roger was never able to
understand how he ran, or rather flew so fast, and without fatigue.

In short, he did not lose a single game, and won the souls of the six
defunct golfers. Belzebuth rolled his eyes like an angry tom-cat.

"Shall we go on?" said the wheelwright of Coq.

"No," replied the other; "they expect me at the Witches' Sabbath on
the hill of Copiemont.

"That brigand," said he aside, "is capable of filching all my game."

And he vanished.

Returned home, the great golfer shut up his souls in a sack and went
to bed, enchanted to have beaten Mynheer van Belzebuth.

X

Two years after