An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge
Project Gutenberg
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE
by
Ambrose Bierce
THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION, 1988
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.
http://www.gutenberg.net
Komentar
Posting Komentar