An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

[Otis McNutt 395]

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 trust 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 to 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.

[Arcane 12]

... nice. I like it. Good job! ^^

[Knuckle 484]

You actually wrote all that? Or is it from a book?

[Goron Merchant 1]

Its a short story, i forgot who wrote it. Its a great short story. They made a short movie out of it too.

We read/watched this in class.

[Otis McNutt 395]

Its a short story, i forgot who wrote it. Its a great short story. They made a short movie out of it too.

We read/watched this in class.

Are you sure it wasn't the "Twilight Zone" episode, it was on SciFi channel yesterday. one of the greatest ever right behind "Monsters are due on Maple street" "The Jeopardy Room" "No time like the past" and "Terror at 30 thousand feet"! There's something on the wing of the plane! Billy Shatner ruled in that!

[Goron Merchant 1]

Oh. Maybe Twilight Zone made an interpretation of the short story.

[Otis McNutt 395]

Yep, they did. It was a briliant adaptation of a great short story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Occurrence..._Twilight_Zone)

And to correct my earlier mistake the Shatner was called "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"