The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ensign Knightley and Other Stories, by A. E. W. Mason

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Title: Ensign Knightley and Other Stories

Author: A. E. W. Mason

Release Date: July 9, 2004 [eBook #12859]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY AND OTHER STORIES***

E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY AND OTHER STORIES

By

A. E. W. MASON

Author of "The Courtship of Morrice Buckler," "The Watchers,"
"Parson Kelly," etc.

1901

CONTENTS.

ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY THE MAN OF WHEELS MR. MITCHELBOURNE'S LAST ESCAPADE THE COWARD THE DESERTER THE CROSSED GLOVES THE SHUTTERED HOUSE KEEPER OF THE BISHOP THE CRUISE OF THE "WILLING MIND" HOW BARRINGTON RETURNED TO JOHANNESBURG HATTERAS THE PRINCESS JOCELIANDE A LIBERAL EDUCATION THE TWENTY-KRONER STORY THE FIFTH PICTURE

ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY.

It was eleven o'clock at night when Surgeon Wyley of His Majesty's ship Bonetta washed his hands, drew on his coat, and walked from the hospital up the narrow cobbled street of Tangier to the Main-Guard by the Catherine Port. In the upper room of the Main-Guard he found Major Shackleton of the Tangier Foot taking a hand at bassette with Lieutenant Scrope of Trelawney's Regiment and young Captain Tessin of the King's Battalion. There were three other officers in the room, and to them Surgeon Wyley began to talk in a prosy, medical strain. Two of his audience listened in an uninterested stolidity for just so long as the remnant of manners, which still survived in Tangier, commanded, and then strolling through the open window on to the balcony, lit their pipes.

Overhead the stars blazed in the rich sky of Morocco; the riding-lights of Admiral Herbert's fleet sprinkled the bay; and below them rose the hum of an unquiet town. It was the night of May 13th, 1680, and the life of every Christian in Tangier hung in the balance. The Moors had burst through the outposts to the west, and were now entrenched beneath the walls. The Henrietta Redoubt had fallen that day; to-morrow the little fort at Devil's Drop, built on the edge of the sand where the sea rippled up to the palisades, must fall; and Charles Fort, to the southwest, was hardly in a better case. However, a sortie had been commanded at daybreak as a last effort to relieve Charles Fort, and the two officers on the balcony speculated over their pipes on the chances of success.

Meanwhile, inside the room Surgeon Wyley lectured to his remaining auditor, who, too tired to remonstrate, tilted his chair against the wall and dozed.

"A concussion of the brain," Wyley went on, "has this curious effect, that after recovery the patient will have lost from his consciousness a period of time which immediately preceded the injury. Thus a man may walk down a street here in Tangier; four, five, six hours afterwards, he mounts his horse, is thrown on to his head. When he wakes again to his senses, the last thing he remembers is—what? A sign, perhaps, over a shop in the street he walked down, or a leper pestering him for alms. The intervening hours are lost to him, and forever. It is no question of an abeyance of memory. There is a gap in the continuity of his experience, and that gap he will never fill up."

"Except by hearsay?"

The correction came from Lieutenant Scrope at the bassette table. It was quite carelessly uttered while the Lieutenant was picking up his cards. Surgeon Wyley shifted his chair towards the table, and accepted the correction.

"Except, of course, by hearsay."

Wyley was a new-comer to Tangier, having sailed into the bay less than a week back; but he had been long enough in the town to find in Scrope a subject at once of interest and perplexity. Scrope was in years nearer forty than thirty, dark of complexion, aquiline of feature, and though a trifle below the middle height he redeemed his stature by the litheness of his figure. What interested Wyley was that he seemed a man in whom strong passions were always desperately at war with a strong will. He wore habitually a mask of reserve; behind it, Wyley was aware of sleeping fires. He spoke habitually in a quiet, decided voice, like one that has the soundings of his nature; beneath it, Wyley detected, continually recurring, continually subdued, a note of turbulence. Here, in a word, was a man whose hand was against the world but who would not strike at random. What perplexed Wyley, on the other hand, was Scrope's subordinate rank of lieutenant in a garrison where, from the frequency of death, promotion was of the quickest. He sat there at the table, a lieutenant; a boy of twenty-four faced him, and the boy was a captain and his superior.

It was to the Lieutenant, however, that Wyley resumed his discourse.

"The length of time lost is proportionate to the severity of the concussion. It may be only an hour; I have known it to be a day." He leaned back in his chair and smiled. "A strange question that for a man to ask himself—What did he do during those hours?—a question to appal him."

Scrope chose a card from his hand and played it. Without looking up from the table, he asked: "To appal him? Why?"

"Because the question would be not so much what did he do, as what may he not have done. A man rides through life insecurely seated on his passions. Within a few hours the most honest man may commit a damnable crime, a damnable dishonour."

Scrope looked quietly at the Surgeon to read the intention of his words. Then: "I suppose so," he said carelessly. "But do you think that question would press?"

"Why not?" asked Wyley.

Scrope shrugged his shoulders. "I should need an example before I believed you."

The example was at the door. The corporal of the guard at the Catherine Port knocked and was admitted. He told his story to Major Shackleton, and as he told it the two officers lounged back into the room from the balcony, and the other who was dozing against the wall brought the legs of his chair with a bang to the floor and woke up.

It appeared that a sentry at the stockade outside the Catherine Port had suddenly noticed a flutter of white on the ground a few yards from the stockade. He watched this white object, and it moved. He challenged it, and was answered by a whispered prayer for admission in the English tongue and in an English voice. The sentry demanded the password, and received as a reply, "Inchiquin. It is the last password I have knowledge of. Let me in! Let me in!"

The sentry called the corporal, the corporal admitted the fugitive and brought him to the Main-Guard. He was now in the guard-room below.

"You did well," said the Major. "The man has come from the Moorish lines, and may have news which will profit us in the morning. Let him up!" and as the corporal retired, "'Inchiquin,'" he repeated thoughtfully: "I cannot call to mind that password."

Now Wyley had noticed that when the corporal first mentioned the word, Scrope, who was looking over his cards, had