hatnots; 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 s