eemed 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