The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Terrible Coward, by George Manville Fenn

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Title: A Terrible Coward

Author: George Manville Fenn

Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23376]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TERRIBLE COWARD ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

A Terrible Coward, by George Manville Fenn.

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The book is set in a small Cornish fishing village. There is a
dangerous swimming feat which is used as a rite of passage among the
boys and young men. One young man, the hero of this short book, has not
yet dared to do this feat. Another young man, annoyed by the hero's
apparent lack of courage, does something very nasty and unkind which
very nearly drowns our hero.

However, shortly afterwards, events so pan out that the tables are
turned, and it is seen that our hero is not the coward, while his enemy
is.

It's about a two-hour read, but is well-written and in the vintage
Manville Fenn style in which "how does he get out of this?" events
follow closely on one another.

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A TERRIBLE COWARD, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE DIVER'S ROCK.

Boom! with a noise like thunder.

_Plash_! directly after; but the sounds those two words express,
multiplied and squared if you like, till the effect upon the senses is,
on the first hearing, one of dread mingled with awe at the mightiness of
the power of the sea.

For this is not "how the waters come down at Lodore," but how they come
in at Carn Du, a little fishing town on the Cornish coast.

There's a black mass of rock standing out like a buttress just to the
west of the little harbour, running right into the sea, and going down
straight like a wall into the deep clear water at its foot, as if to say
to the waves, "Thus far may you come, and no farther." For hundreds
upon hundreds of years the winds and tides have combined to rid
themselves of this obstacle to their progress, the winds urging the
waves that come rolling in from the vast Atlantic, gathering f