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 Belzébuth, 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 Belzébuth, “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 Condé 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. Belzébuth 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 Copiémont. “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 Belzébuth. X Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a visit which he little expected. An old man, tall, thin and yellow, came into the workshop carrying a scythe on his shoulder. “Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?” “No, faith, _my_ scythe is never unhafted.” “Then how can I serve you?” “By following me: your hour is come.” “The devil,” said the great golfer, “could you not wait a little till I have finished this wheel?” “Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have well earned a smoke.” “In that case, master, sit down there on the _causeuse_. I have at your service some famous tobacco at seven petards the pound.” “That’s good, faith; make haste.” And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door on the elm trunk. Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned to his work. At the end of a quarter of an hour Death called to him: