A Terrible Coward

by George Manville Fenn

Almost as he touched it the stream bore him by, but there was another mass close at hand, hung with tresses of seaweed and thickly strewed with mussels, and here he got a hold for a few moments, in spite of the drag of the rushing water.

It required no little effort to hold on and support the drowning man as well, but even a few moments’ rest gave him some return of power, and he was helped now by his companion, who in a feeble struggle to get at and clutch something, caught at the seaweed, into which his fingers convulsively wound themselves, and thus gave Harry Paul a hand at liberty for his own use.

It was some time, though, before he dared to do more than cling to the rock. He was too weak and helpless. At the end of a few minutes, however, he felt stronger, and summoning up his energies for the effort, he got one hand higher, then the other, and clung there half out of the water.

There was less drag upon him here from the stream; his breath came more freely, and with it returning strength, sufficient to enable him to climb right out of the water, lie face downwards upon the rock, and, stretching down his hands, clasp the wrists of his companion, whose fingers seemed to have grown into the tough weed to which they clung.

This act brought his face within a foot or so of his companion’s countenance. Their eyes met, and in his surprise Harry Paul nearly let go, for he now for the first time realised the fact that he had been risking his life in an endeavour to save that of the man whom he had heard accused of an attempt to destroy him the night before.

It was a strange position, and Harry Paul, as he bent down holding Penelly there, recalled all he had heard, and, in spite of his manly feelings, he could not help believing that in a sudden fit of dislike, or under a momentary temptation, Penelly had thrown the nets over him, though evidently repenting the next moment of what he had done.

Penelly, too, was fast recovering his strength, and with it the horrible sense of confusion was passing away. He, too, realised that the man whom he had so cruelly assailed was now sustaining him after evidently swimming to his aid.

He gazed for a few moments straight into Harry’s eyes, and in their stern gaze as they seemed to read him through and through, he saw, or fancied that he saw, his own condemnation, and that Harry was going to thrust him from his hold.

It was a strange reaction as he hung there—he, the brave and daring swimmer, famed for his dives off Carn Du, held up by the man he had always denounced as a terrible coward; whom he had hated from boyhood almost, without cause, and whom really, under the impulse of a horrible temptation, he had on the previous night tried to hamper in his swimming, though not really to drown.

Neither spoke, neither stirred for some time. There was no great strain upon Harry’s hands now, since Penelly’s grasp was desperate. The former was content to lie there gazing into his enemy’s eyes, for his strength was returning with every breath; that breathing was less laboured, and, in place of his heart throbbing and jumping, sending hot gushes of blood, as it were, choking to his throat, it began to settle steadily down to its ordinary labours in the breast of a strongly-built, healthy, temperate man.