An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

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
crosstimber 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 raiiway
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 unJform 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 unnaturai 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 centre 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 aclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed
for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a
brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between 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 iormal 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 crossties
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 sltting 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 delude 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 fibre 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 plash, 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 brigbten, 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 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 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 plash 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
aeolian 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 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 he 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.