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 w