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.