An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge
by Ambrose Bierce
I
A man stood upon
a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty
feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord.
A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber
above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards
laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing
for him and his executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army,
directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a
short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of
his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood
with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say,
vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm
thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an
erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men
to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded
the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it. Beyond one of the
sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for
a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an
outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle
acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles,
with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon
commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between the bridge and fort were the
spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest,"
the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward
against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant
stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his
left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of
the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily,
motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been
statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent,
observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a
dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal
manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of
military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was
engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a
civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His
features were good--a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his
long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar
of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no
whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which
one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently
this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for
hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations
being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the
plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain,
saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved
apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant
standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the
cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not
quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the
captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former
the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down
between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple
and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a
moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the
swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing
driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How
slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!
He closed his
eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water,
touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some
distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift--all had
distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking
through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore
nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a
blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He
wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed
both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell.
He awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The
intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening.
With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness.
They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What
he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his
eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands,"
he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving
I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the
woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my
wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."
As these
thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed
man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The
sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar
was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being
a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an
original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances
of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented
him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous
campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious
restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the
soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would
come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No
service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too
perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian
who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much
qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that
all is fair in love and war.
One evening while
Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his
grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of
water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands.
While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and
inquired eagerly for news from the front.
"The Yanks
are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready
for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order
and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order,
which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with
the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw
the order."
"How far is
it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About
thirty miles."
"Is there no
force on this side the creek?"
"Only a
picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end
of the bridge."
"Suppose a
man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the picket post and perhaps
get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could
he accomplish?"
The soldier
reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed
that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against
the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like
tow."
The lady had now
brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed
to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the
plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a
Federal scout.
III
As Peyton
Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and
was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened--ages later, it seemed
to him--by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of
suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward
through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along
well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid
periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an
intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a
feeling of fulness--of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by
thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power
only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed
in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without
material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a
vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him
shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his
ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew
that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no
additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him
and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a
river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness
and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was
still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere
glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising
toward the surface--knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable.
"To be hanged and drowned," he thought? "that is not so bad; but
I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not
conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was
trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might
observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid
effort!--what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine
endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the
hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new
interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck.
They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling
those of a water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he
shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been
succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached
horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly,
gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was
racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands
gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick,
downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes
were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a
supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which
instantly he expelled in a shriek!
He was now in
full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen
and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so
exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before
perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as
they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the
individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very insects
upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching
their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops
upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the
eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of
the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat--all these made
audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its
body parting the water.
He had come to
the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to
wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort,
the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his
executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and
gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not
fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible,
their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard
a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of
his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one
of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke
rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the
bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it
was a grey eye and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest, and that
all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter-swirl
had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the
forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a
monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a
distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the
ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to
know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the
lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and
pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing
tranquillity in the men--with what accurately measured intervals fell those
cruel words:
"Attention,
company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!"
Farquhar
dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice
of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again
toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened,
oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands,
then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and
neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the
surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water;
he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost
finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as
they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their
sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man
saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the
current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the
rapidity of lightning.
The
officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second
time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already
given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"
An appalling
splash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound,
diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in
an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps!
A rising sheet of
water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The
cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the
commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the
air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the
forest beyond.
"They will
not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge
of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me--the
report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt
himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the
forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men--all were commingled and blurred.
Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of
color--that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being
whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and
sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left
bank of the stream--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which
concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion
of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He
dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly
blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of
nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant
garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the
fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces
among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of olian
harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape--was content to remain in that
enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle
of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream.
The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet,
rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he
traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed
interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road.
He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny
in the revelation.
By nightfall he
was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged
him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right
direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed
untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the
barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees
formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point,
like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through
this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped
in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which
had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of
singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he distinctly heard
whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain
and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a
circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he
could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its
fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How
softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the
roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless,
despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees
another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at
the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in
the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open
the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female
garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the
veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a
smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how
beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to
clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white
light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then all is
darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar
was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath
the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
