"Dunsany, Lord - The Three Sailors' Gambit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

The Three Sailors' Gambit

by Lord Dunsany




Sitting some years ago in the ancient tavern at Over, one
afternoon in Spring, I was waiting, as was my custom, for
something strange to happen. In this I was not always
disappointed for the very curious leaded panes of that
tavern, facing the sea, let a light into the low-ceilinged
room so mysterious, particularly at evening, 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 over-ruled 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.