Begumbah: a Tale of the Indian Mutiny, and Three Other Short Stories

This book of short stories is an excellent read in the usual Fenn style of suspense. "How does he get out of this one?" is always in the reader's mind. Most of the book is taken up with a story about the plight of the British members of a small garrison, during the Indian Mutiny. The second story is about half as long, and is a well-written and extremely plausible story about a house owned by an old gentleman of ancient lineage, where there is a collection of gold plate which was said to be an "incubus", that is, the subject of a curse. As indeed there turns out to be. The third story is about a couple of smugglers who get trapped in a "gowt", which is the exit to the sea of one of the great land-drains of Eastern England, constructed by that great Dutch engineer, Vandermuyden, in the seventeenth century. And the last story is about a new and well-found ship, that nearly doesn't weather a severe storm in the Atlantic. The captain has taken to the bottle, and command is taken by a junior officer: the ship survives. According to Wikipedia: "George Manville Fenn (January 3, 1831, Pimlico - August 26, 1909, Isleworth) was a British writer. He worked as a teacher in Lincolnshire, until he became printer, editor and publisher of various magazines. He had eight children with his wife Susanna Leake, whom he had married in 1855. Most of hist work consists of adventure stories for young readers, featuring Explorers, Smugglers, young Adventurers and Seamen. His adult novels offer critical social commentary on Victorian England, especially reconsidering economic questions."