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

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 whatnots; 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