ning, 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 s