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!”