Sitting some years ago in the ancient tavern at Over, one afternoon in
Spring, I was waiting, as was my custom, for something strange to
happen. In this I was not always disappointed for the very curious
leaded panes of that tavern, facing the sea, let a light into the
low-ceilinged room so mysterious, particularly at evening, that it
somehow seemed to affect the events within. Be that as it may, I have
seen strange things in that tavern and heard stranger things told.
And as I sat there three sailors entered the tavern, just back, as
they said, from sea, and come with sunburned skins from a very long
voyage to the South; and one of them had a board and chessmen under
his arm, and they were complaining that they could find no one who
knew how to play chess. This was the year that the Tournament was in
England. And a little dark man at a table in a corner of the room,
drinking sugar and water, asked them why they wished to play chess;
and they said they would play any man for a pound. They opened their
box of chessmen then, a cheap and nasty set, and the man refused to
play with such uncouth pieces, and the sailors suggested that perhaps
he could find better ones; and in the end he went round to his
lodgings near by and brought his own, and then they sat down to play
for a pound a side. It was a consultation game on the part of the
sailors, they said that all three must play.
Well, the little dark man turned out to be Stavlokratz.
Of course he was fabulously poor, and the sovereign meant more to him
than it did to the sailors, but he didn't seem keen to play, it was
the sailors that insisted; he had made the badness of the sailors'
chessmen an excuse for not playing at all, but the sailors had
overruled that, and then he told them straight out who he was, and the
sailors had never heard of Stavlokratz.
Well, no more was said after that. Stavlokratz said no more, either
because he did not wish to boast or because he was huffed that they
did not know who he was. And I saw no reason to enlighten the sailors
about him; if he took their pound they had brought it upon themselves,
and my boundless admiration for his genius made me feel that he
deserved whatever might come his way. He had not asked to play, they
had named the stakes, he had warned them, and gave them the first
move; there was nothing unfair about Stavlokratz.
I had never seen Stavlokratz before, but I had played over nearly
every one of his games in the World Championship for the last three or
four years; he was always of course the model chosen by students. Only
young chess-players can appreciate my delight at seeing him play first
hand.
Well, the sailors used to lower their heads almost as low as the table
and mutter together before every move, but they muttered so low that
you could not hear what they planned.
They lost three pawns almost straight off, then a knight, and shortly
after a bishop; they were playing in fact the famous Three Sailors'
Gambit.
Stavlokratz was playing with the easy confidence that they say was
usual with him, when suddenly at about the thirteenth move I saw him
look surprised; he leaned forward and looked at the board and then at
the sailors, but he learned nothing from their vacant faces; he looked
back at the board again.
He moved more deliberately after that; the sailors lost two more
pawns, Stavlokratz had lost nothing as yet. He looked at me I thought
almost irritably, as though something would happen that he wished I
was not there to see. I believed at first that he had qualms about
taking the sailors' pound, until it dawned on me that he might lose
the game; I saw that possibility in his face, not on the board, for
the game had become almost incomprehensible to me. I cannot describe
my astonishment. And a few moves later Stavlokratz resigned.
The sailors showed no more elation than if they had won some game with
greasy cards, playing amongst themselves.
Stavlokratz asked them where they got their opening. "We kind of
thought of it," said one. "It just come into our heads like," said
another. He asked them questions about the ports they had touched at.
He evidently thought as I did myself that they had learned their
extraordinary gambit, perhaps in some old dependancy of Spain, from
some young master of chess whose fame had not reached Europe. He was
very eager to find out who this man could be, for neither of us
imagined that those sailors had invented it, nor would anyone who had
seen them. But he got no information from the sailors.
Stavlokratz could very ill afford the loss of a pound. He offered to
play them again for the same stakes. The sailors began to set up the
white pieces. Stavlokratz pointed out that it was his turn for the
first move. The sailors agreed but continued to set up the white
pieces and sat with the white before them waiting for him to move. It
was a trivial incident, but it revealed to Stavlokratz and myself that
none of these sailors was aware that white always moves first.
Stavlokratz played them on his own opening, reasoning of course that
as they had never heard of Stavlokratz they would not know of his
opening; and with probably a very good hope of getting back his pound
he played the fifth variation with its tricky seventh move, at least
so he intended, but it turned to a variation unknown to the students
of Stavlokratz.
Throughout this game I watched the sailors closely, and I became sure,
as only an attentive watcher can be, that the one on their left, Jim
Bunion, did not even know the moves.
When I had made up my mind about this I watched only the other two,
Adam Bailey and Bill Sloggs, trying to make out which was the master
mind; and for a long while I could not. And then I heard Adam Bailey
mutter six words, the only words I heard throughout the game, of all
their consultations, "No, him with the horse's head." And I decided
that Adam Bailey did not know what a knight was, though of course he
might have been explaining things to Bill Sloggs, but it did not sound
like that; so that left Bill Sloggs. I watched Bill Sloggs after that
with a certain wonder; he was no more intellectual than the others to
look at, though rather more forceful perhaps. Poor old Stavlokratz was
beaten again.
Well, in the end I paid for Stavlokratz, and tried to get a game with
Bill Sloggs alone, but this he would not agree to, it must be all
three or none: and then I went back with Stavlokratz to his lodgings.
He very kindly gave me a game: of course it did not last long but I am
prouder of having been beaten by Stavlokratz than of any game that I
have ever won. And then we talked for an hour about the sailors, and
neither of us could make head or tail of them. I told him what I had
noticed about Jim Bunion and Adam Bailey, and he agreed with me that
Bill Sloggs was the man, though as to how he had come by that gambit
or that variation of Stavlokratz's own opening he had no theory.
I had the sailors' address which was that tavern as much as anywhere,
and they were to be there all evening. As evening drew in I went back
to the tavern, and found there still the three sailors. And I offered
Bill Sloggs two pounds for a game with him alone and he refused, but
in the end he played me for a drink. And then I found that he had not
heard of the "en passant" rule, and believed that the fact of checking
the king prevented him from castling, and did not know that a player
can have two or more queens on the board at the same time if he queens
his pawns, or that a pawn could ever become a knight; and he made as
many of the stock mistakes as he had time for in a short game, which I
won. I thought that I should have got at the secret then, but his
mates who had sat scowling all the while in the corner came up and
interfered. It was a breach of their compact apparently for one to
play by himself, at any rate they seemed angry. So I left the tavern
then and came back again next day, and the next day and the day after,
and often saw the sailors, but none were in a communicative mood. I
had got Stavlokratz to keep away, and they could get no one to play
chess with at a pound a side, and I would not play with them unless
they told me the secret.
And then one evening I found Jim Bunion drunk, yet not so drunk as he
wished, for the two pounds were spent; and I gave him very nearly a
tumbler of whiskey, or what passed for whiskey in that tavern at Over,
and he told me the secret at once. I had given the others some whiskey
to keep them quiet, and later on in the evening they must have gone
out, but Jim Bunion stayed with me by a little table leaning across it
and talking low, right into my face, his breath smelling all the while
of what passed for whiskey.
The wind was blowing outside as it does on bad nights in November,
coming up with moans from the South, towards which the tavern faced
with all its leaded panes, so that none but I was able to hear his
voice as Jim Bunion gave up his secret. They had sailed for years, he
told me, with Bill Snyth; and on their last voyage home Bill Snyth had
died. And he was buried at sea. Just the other side of the line they
buried him, and his pals divided his kit, and these three got his
crystal that only they knew he had, which Bill got one night in Cuba.
They played chess with the crystal.
And he was going on to tell me about that night in Cuba when Bill had
bought the crystal from the stranger, how some folks might think they
had seen thunderstorms, but let them go and listen to that one that
thundered in Cuba when Bill was buying his crystal and they'd find
that they didn't know what thunder was. But then I interrupted him,
unfortunately perhaps, for it broke the thread of his tale and set him
rambling a while, and cursing other people and talking of other lands,
China, Port Said and Spain: but I brought him back to Cuba again in
the end. I asked him how they could play chess with a crystal; and he
said that you looked at the board and looked at the crystal, and there
was the game in the crystal the same as it was on the board, with all
the odd little pieces looking just the same though smaller, horses'
heads and whatnots; and as soon as the other man moved the move came
out in the crystal, and then your move appeared after it, and all you
had to do was to make it on the board. If you didn't make the move
that you saw in the crystal things got very bad in it, everything
horribly mixed and moving about rapidly, and scowling and making the
same move over and over again, and the crystal getting cloudier and
cloudier; it was best to take one's eyes away from it then, or one
dreamt about it afterwards, and the foul little pieces came and cursed
you in your sleep and moved about all night with their crooked moves.
I thought then that, drunk though he was, he was not telling the
truth, and I promised to show him to people who played chess all their
lives so that he and his mates could get a pound whenever they liked,
and I promised not to reveal his secret even to Stavlokratz, if only
he would tell me all the truth; and this promise I have kept till long
after the three sailors have lost their secret. I told him straight
out that I did not believe in the crystal. Well, Jim Bunion leaned
forward then, even further across the table, and swore he had seen the
man from whom Bill had bought the crystal and that he was one to whom
anything was possible. To begin with his hair was villainously dark,
and his features were unmistakable even down there in the South, and
he could play chess with his eyes shut, and even then he could beat
anyone in Cuba. But there was more than this, there was the bargain he
made with Bill that told one who he was. He sold that crystal for Bill
Snyth's soul.
Jim Bunion leaning over the table with his breath in my face nodded
his head several times and was silent.
I began to question him then. Did they play chess as far away as Cuba?
He said they all did. Was it conceivable that any man would make such
a bargain as Snyth made? Wasn't the trick well known? Wasn't it in
hundreds of books? And if he couldn't read books mustn't he have heard
from sailors that it is the Devil's commonest dodge to get souls from
silly people?
Jim Bunion had leant back in his own chair quietly smiling at my
questions but when I mentioned silly people he leaned forward again,
and thrust his face close to mine and asked me several times if I
called Bill Snyth silly. It seemed that these three sailors thought a
great deal of Bill Snyth and it made Jim Bunion angry to hear anything
said against him. I hastened to say that the bargain seemed silly
though not of course the man who made it; for the sailor was almost
threatening, and no wonder for the whiskey in that dim tavern would
madden a nun.
When I said that the bargain seemed silly he smiled again, and then he
thundered his fist down on the table and said that no one had ever yet
got the best of Bill Snyth and that that was the worst bargain for
himself that the Devil ever made, and that from all he had read or
heard of the Devil he had never been so badly had before as the night
when he met Bill Snyth at the inn in the thunderstorm in Cuba, for
Bill Snyth already had the damndest soul at sea; Bill was a good
fellow, but his soul was damned right enough, so he got the crystal
for nothing.
Yes, he was there and saw it all himself, Bill Snyth in the Spanish
inn and the candles flaring, and the Devil walking in and out of the
rain, and then the bargain between those two old hands, and the Devil
going out into the lightning, and the thunderstorm raging on, and Bill
Snyth sitting chuckling to himself between the bursts of the thunder.
But I had more questions to ask and interrupted this reminiscence. Why
did they all three always play together? And a look of something like
fear came over Jim Bunion's face; and at first he would not speak. And
then he said to me that it was like this; they had not paid for that
crystal, but got it as their share of Bill Snyth's kit. If they had
paid for it or given something in exchange to Bill Snyth that would
have been all right, but they couldn't do that now because Bill was
dead, and they were not sure if the old bargain might not hold good.
And Hell must be a large and lonely place, and to go there alone must
be bad, and so the three agreed that they would all stick together,
and use the crystal all three or not at all, unless one died, and then
the two would use it and the one that was gone would wait for them.
And the last of the three to go would take the crystal with him, or
maybe the crystal would bring him. They didn't think, they said, they
were the kind of men for Heaven, and he hoped they knew their place
better than that, but they didn't fancy the notion of Hell alone, if
Hell it had to be. It was all right for Bill Snyth, he was afraid of
nothing. He had known perhaps five men that were not afraid of death,
but Bill Snyth was not afraid of Hell. He died with a smile on his
face like a child in its sleep; it was drink killed poor Bill Snyth.
This was why I had beaten Bill Sloggs; Sloggs had the crystal on him
while we played, but would not use it; these sailors seemed to fear
loneliness as some people fear being hurt; he was the only one of the
three who could play chess at all, he had learnt it in order to be
able to answer questions and keep up their pretence, but he had learnt
it badly, as I found. I never saw the crystal, they never showed it to
anyone; but Jim Bunion told me that night that it was about the size
that the thick end of a hen's egg would be if it were round. And then
he fell asleep.
There were many more questions that I would have asked him but I could
not wake him up. I even pulled the table away so that he fell to the
floor, but he slept on, and all the tavern was dark but for one candle
burning; and it was then that I noticed for the first time that the
other two sailors had gone, no one remained at all but Jim Bunion and
I and the sinister barman of that curious inn, and he too was asleep.
When I saw that it was impossible to wake the sailor I went out into
the night. Next day Jim Bunion would talk of it no more; and when I
went back to Stavlokratz I found him already putting on paper his
theory about the sailors, which became accepted by chess-players, that
one of them had been taught their curious gambit and that the other
two between them had learnt all the defensive openings as well as
general play. Though who taught them no one could say, in spite of
enquiries made afterwards all along the Southern Pacific.
I never learnt any more details from any of the three sailors, they
were always too drunk to speak or else not drunk enough to be
communicative. I seem just to have taken Jim Bunion at the flood. But
I kept my promise, it was I that introduced them to the Tournament,
and a pretty mess they made of established reputations. And so they
kept on for months, never losing a game and always playing for their
pound a side. I used to follow them wherever they went merely to watch
their play. They were more marvellous than Stavlokratz even in his
youth.
But then they took to liberties such as giving their queen when
playing first-class players. And in the end one day when all three
were drunk they played the best player in England with only a row of
pawns. They won the game all right. But the ball broke to pieces. I
never smelt such a stench in all my life.
The three sailors took it stoically enough, they signed on to
different ships and went back again to the sea, and the world of chess
lost sight, for ever I trust, of the most remarkable players it ever
knew, who would have altogether spoiled the game.