AN
OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE
by
Ambrose
Bierce
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 ties supporting the rails 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 slope 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 up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators—a
single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of
their 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 moustache 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 judgement 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 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 new 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 that gallant army which 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 wartime. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble
for him to perform in the 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 of 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 tinder."
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 fullness—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—he saw the very insects upon them: the
locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray 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
gray eye and remembered having read that gray 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 at 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 tranquility in the
men—with what accurately measured interval fell those cruel words:
"Company!… Attention!…
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 dull 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 downstream—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 an 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 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 AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect
his escape—he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and a 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, famished. 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 golden 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 forwards 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.