Tales of Wonder

by Lord Dunsany

  The Three Sailors' Gambit

  Sitting some years ago in the ancient tavern at Over, one afternoon inSpring, I was waiting, as was my custom, for something strange tohappen. In this I was not always disappointed for the very curiousleaded panes of that tavern, facing the sea, let a light into thelow-ceilinged room so mysterious, particularly at evening, that itsomehow seemed to affect the events within. Be that as it may, I haveseen strange things in that tavern and heard stranger things told.

  And as I sat there three sailors entered the tavern, just back, asthey said, from sea, and come with sunburned skins from a very longvoyage to the South; and one of them had a board and chessmen underhis arm, and they were complaining that they could find no one whoknew how to play chess. This was the year that the Tournament was inEngland. 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 theirbox of chessmen then, a cheap and nasty set, and the man refused toplay with such uncouth pieces, and the sailors suggested that perhapshe could find better ones; and in the end he went round to hislodgings near by and brought his own, and then they sat down to playfor a pound a side. It was a consultation game on the part of thesailors, 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 himthan it did to the sailors, but he didn't seem keen to play, it wasthe sailors that insisted; he had made the badness of the sailors'chessmen an excuse for not playing at all, but the sailors hadoverruled that, and then he told them straight out who he was, and thesailors had never heard of Stavlokratz.

  Well, no more was said after that. Stavlokratz said no more, eitherbecause he did not wish to boast or because he was huffed that theydid not know who he was. And I saw no reason to enlighten the sailorsabout him; if he took their pound they had brought it upon themselves,and my boundless admiration for his genius made me feel that hedeserved whatever might come his way. He had not asked to play, theyhad named the stakes, he had warned them, and gave them the firstmove; there was nothing unfair about Stavlokratz.

  I had never seen Stavlokratz before, but I had played over nearlyevery one of his games in the World Championship for the last three orfour years; he was always of course the model chosen by students. Onlyyoung chess-players can appreciate my delight at seeing him play firsthand.

  Well, the sailors used to lower their heads almost as low as the tableand mutter together before every move, but they muttered so low thatyou could not hear what they planned.

  They lost three pawns almost straight off, then a knight, and shortlyafter a bishop; they were playing in fact the famous Three Sailors'Gambit.

  Stavlokratz was playing with the easy confidence that they say wasusual with him, when suddenly at about the thirteenth move I saw himlook surprised; he leaned forward and looked at the board and then atthe sailors, but he learned nothing from their vacant faces; he lookedback at the board again.

  He moved more deliberately after that; the sailors lost two morepawns, Stavlokratz had lost nothing as yet. He looked at me I thoughtalmost irritably, as though something would happen that he wished Iwas not there to see. I believed at first that he had qualms abouttaking the sailors' pound, until it dawned on me that he might losethe game; I saw that possibility in his face, not on the board, forthe game had become almost incomprehensible to me. I cannot describemy astonishment. And a few moves later Stavlokratz resigned.

  The sailors showed no more elation than if they had won some game withgreasy cards, playing amongst themselves.

  Stavlokratz asked them where they got their opening. "We kind ofthought of it," said one. "It just come into our heads like," saidanother. He asked them questions about the ports they had touched at.He evidently thought as I did myself that they had learned theirextraordinary gambit, perhaps in some old dependancy of Spain, fromsome young master of chess whose fame had not reached Europe. He wasvery eager to find out who this man could be, for neither of usimagined that those sailors had invented it, nor would anyone who hadseen them. But he got no information from the sailors.

  Stavlokratz could very ill afford the loss of a pound. He offered toplay them again for the same stakes. The sailors began to set up thewhite pieces. Stavlokratz pointed out that it was his turn for thefirst move. The sailors agreed but continued to set up the whitepieces and sat with the white before them waiting for him to move. Itwas a trivial incident, but it revealed to Stavlokratz and myself thatnone of these sailors was aware that white always moves first.

  Stavlokratz played them on his own opening, reasoning of course thatas they had never heard of Stavlokratz they would not know of hisopening; and with probably a very good hope of getting back his poundhe played the fifth variation with its tricky seventh move, at leastso he intended, but it turned to a variation unknown to the studentsof 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, JimBunion, 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 mastermind; and for a long while I could not. And then I heard Adam Baileymutter six words, the only words I heard throughout the game, of alltheir consultations, "No, him with the horse's head." And I decidedthat Adam Bailey did not know what a knight was, though of course hemight have been explaining things to Bill Sloggs, but it did not soundlike that; so that left Bill Sloggs. I watched Bill Sloggs after thatwith a certain wonder; he was no more intellectual than the others tolook at, though rather more forceful perhaps. Poor old Stavlokratz wasbeaten again.

  Well, in the end I paid for Stavlokratz, and tried to get a game withBill Sloggs alone, but this he would not agree to, it must be allthree 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 amprouder of having been beaten by Stavlokratz than of any game that Ihave ever won. And then we talked for an hour about the sailors, andneither of us could make head or tail of them. I told him what I hadnoticed about Jim Bunion and Adam Bailey, and he agreed with me thatBill Sloggs was the man, though as to how he had come by that gambitor 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 backto the tavern, and found there still the three sailors. And I offeredBill Sloggs two pounds for a game with him alone and he refused, butin the end he played me for a drink. And then I found that he had notheard of the "en passant" rule, and believed that the fact of checkingthe king prevented him from castling, and did not know that a playercan have two or more queens on the board at the same time if he queenshis pawns, or that a pawn could ever become a knight; and he made asmany of the stock mistakes as he had time for in a short game, which Iwon. I thought that I should have got at the secret then, but hismates who had sat scowling all the while in the corner came up andinterfered. It was a breach of their compact apparently for one toplay by himself, at any rate they seemed angry. So I left the tavernthen 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. Ihad got Stavlokratz to keep away, and they could get no one to playchess with at a pound a side, and I would not play with them unlessthey told me the secret.

  And then one evening I found Jim Bunion drunk, yet not so drunk as hewished, for the two pounds were spent; and I gave him very nearly atumbler 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 whiskeyto keep them quiet, and later on in the evening they must have goneout, but Jim Bunion stayed with me by a little table leaning across itand talking low, right into my face, his breath smelling all the whileof 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 facedwith all its leaded panes, so that none but I was able to hear hisvoice as Jim Bunion gave up his secret. They had sailed for years, hetold me, with Bill Snyth; and on their last voyage home Bill Snyth haddied. And he was buried at sea. Just the other side of the line theyburied him, and his pals divided his kit, and these three got hiscrystal 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 hadbought the crystal from the stranger, how some folks might think theyhad seen thunderstorms, but let them go and listen to that one thatthundered in Cuba when Bill was buying his crystal and they'd findthat they didn't know what thunder was. But then I interrupted him,unfortunately perhaps, for it broke the thread of his tale and set himrambling a while, and cursing other people and talking of other lands,China, Port Said and Spain: but I brought him back to Cuba again inthe end. I asked him how they could play chess with a crystal; and hesaid that you looked at the board and looked at the crystal, and therewas the game in the crystal the same as it was on the board, with allthe odd little pieces looking just the same though smaller, horses'heads and whatnots; and as soon as the other man moved the move cameout in the crystal, and then your move appeared after it, and all youhad to do was to make it on the board. If you didn't make the movethat you saw in the crystal things got very bad in it, everythinghorribly mixed and moving about rapidly, and scowling and making thesame move over and over again, and the crystal getting cloudier andcloudier; it was best to take one's eyes away from it then, or onedreamt about it afterwards, and the foul little pieces came and cursedyou in your sleep and moved about all night with their crooked moves.

  I thought then that, drunk though he was, he was not telling thetruth, and I promised to show him to people who played chess all theirlives 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 onlyhe would tell me all the truth; and this promise I have kept till longafter the three sailors have lost their secret. I told him straightout that I did not believe in the crystal. Well, Jim Bunion leanedforward then, even further across the table, and swore he had seen theman from whom Bill had bought the crystal and that he was one to whomanything was possible. To begin with his hair was villainously dark,and his features were unmistakable even down there in the South, andhe could play chess with his eyes shut, and even then he could beatanyone in Cuba. But there was more than this, there was the bargain hemade with Bill that told one who he was. He sold that crystal for BillSnyth's soul.

  Jim Bunion leaning over the table with his breath in my face noddedhis 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 sucha bargain as Snyth made? Wasn't the trick well known? Wasn't it inhundreds of books? And if he couldn't read books mustn't he have heardfrom sailors that it is the Devil's commonest dodge to get souls fromsilly people?

  Jim Bunion had leant back in his own chair quietly smiling at myquestions but when I mentioned silly people he leaned forward again,and thrust his face close to mine and asked me several times if Icalled Bill Snyth silly. It seemed that these three sailors thought agreat deal of Bill Snyth and it made Jim Bunion angry to hear anythingsaid against him. I hastened to say that the bargain seemed sillythough not of course the man who made it; for the sailor was almostthreatening, and no wonder for the whiskey in that dim tavern wouldmadden a nun.

  When I said that the bargain seemed silly he smiled again, and then hethundered his fist down on the table and said that no one had ever yetgot the best of Bill Snyth and that that was the worst bargain forhimself that the Devil ever made, and that from all he had read orheard of the Devil he had never been so badly had before as the nightwhen he met Bill Snyth at the inn in the thunderstorm in Cuba, forBill Snyth already had the damndest soul at sea; Bill was a goodfellow, but his soul was damned right enough, so he got the crystalfor nothing.

  Yes, he was there and saw it all himself, Bill Snyth in the Spanishinn and the candles flaring, and the Devil walking in and out of therain, and then the bargain between those two old hands, and the Devilgoing out into the lightning, and the thunderstorm raging on, and BillSnyth sitting chuckling to himself between the bursts of the thunder.

  But I had more questions to ask and interrupted this reminiscence. Whydid they all three always play together? And a look of something likefear came over Jim Bunion's face; and at first he would not speak. Andthen he said to me that it was like this; they had not paid for thatcrystal, but got it as their share of Bill Snyth's kit. If they hadpaid for it or given something in exchange to Bill Snyth that wouldhave been all right, but they couldn't do that now because Bill wasdead, 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 mustbe 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 thenthe 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, ormaybe the crystal would bring him. They didn't think, they said, theywere the kind of men for Heaven, and he hoped they knew their placebetter than that, but they didn't fancy the notion of Hell alone, ifHell it had to be. It was all right for Bill Snyth, he was afraid ofnothing. 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 hisface 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 himwhile we played, but would not use it; these sailors seemed to fearloneliness as some people fear being hurt; he was the only one of thethree who could play chess at all, he had learnt it in order to beable to answer questions and keep up their pretence, but he had learntit badly, as I found. I never saw the crystal, they never showed it toanyone; but Jim Bunion told me that night that it was about the sizethat the thick end of a hen's egg would be if it were round. And thenhe fell asleep.

  There were many more questions that I would have asked him but I couldnot wake him up. I even pulled the table away so that he fell to thefloor, but he slept on, and all the tavern was dark but for one candleburning; and it was then that I noticed for the first time that theother two sailors had gone, no one remained at all but Jim Bunion andI 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 intothe night. Next day Jim Bunion would talk of it no more; and when Iwent back to Stavlokratz I found him already putting on paper histheory about the sailors, which became accepted by chess-players, thatone of them had been taught their curious gambit and that the othertwo between them had learnt all the defensive openings as well asgeneral play. Though who taught them no one could say, in spite ofenquiries made afterwards all along the Southern Pacific.

  I never learnt any more details from any of the three sailors, theywere always too drunk to speak or else not drunk enough to becommunicative. I seem just to have taken Jim Bunion at the flood. ButI kept my promise, it was I that introduced them to the Tournament,and a pretty mess they made of established reputations. And so theykept on for months, never losing a game and always playing for theirpound a side. I used to follow them wherever they went merely to watchtheir play. They were more marvellous than Stavlokratz even in hisyouth.

  But then they took to liberties such as giving their queen whenplaying first-class players. And in the end one day when all threewere drunk they played the best player in England with only a row ofpawns. They won the game all right. But the ball broke to pieces. Inever smelt such a stench in all my life.

  The three sailors took it stoically enough, they signed on todifferent ships and went back again to the sea, and the world o
f chesslost sight, for ever I trust, of the most remarkable players it everknew, who would have altogether spoiled the game.