They lost three pawns almost straight off, then a knight, and shortly after a bishop; they were playing in fact the famous Three Sailors’ Gambit.

Stavlokratz was playing with the easy confidence that they say was usual with him, when suddenly at about the thirteenth move I saw him look surprised; he leaned forward and looked at the board and then at the sailors, but he learned nothing from their vacant faces; he looked back at the board again.

He moved more deliberately after that; the sailors lost two more pawns, Stavlokratz had lost nothing as yet.  He looked at me I thought almost irritably, as though something would happen that he wished I was not there to see.  I believed at first that he had qualms about taking the sailors’ pound, until it dawned on me that he might lose the game; I saw that possibility in his face, not on the board, for the game had become almost incomprehensible to me.  I cannot describe my astonishment.  And a few moves later Stavlokratz resigned.

The sailors showed no more elation than if they had won some game with greasy cards, playing amongst themselves.

Stavlokratz asked them where they got their opening.  “We kind of thought of it,” said one.  “It just come into our heads like,” said another.  He asked them questions about the ports they had touched at.  He evidently thought as I did myself that they had learned their extraordinary gambit, perhaps in some old dependancy of Spain, from some young master of chess whose fame had not reached Europe.  He was very eager to find out who this man could be, for neither of us imagined that those sailors had invented it, nor would anyone who had seen them.  But he got no information from the sailors.

Stavlokratz could very ill afford the loss of a pound.  He offered to play them again for the same stakes.  The sailors began to set up the white pieces.  Stavlokratz pointed out that it was his turn for the first move.  The sailors agreed but continued to set up the white pieces and sat with the white before them waiting for him to move.  It was a trivial incident, but it revealed to Stavlokratz and myself that none of these sailors was aware that white always moves first.

Stavlokratz played them on his own opening, reasoning of course that as they had never heard of Stavlokratz they would not know of his opening; and with probably a very good hope of getting back his pound he played the fifth variation with its tricky seventh move, at least so he intended, but it turned to a variation unknown to the students of Stavlokratz.

Throughout this game I watched the sailors closely, and I became sure, as only an attentive watcher can be, that the one on their left, Jim Bunion, did not even know the moves.