STORIES***


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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, W