"Ambrose Beirce - An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bierce Ambrose)

[Title:An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge]
[Author:Ambrose Bierce]
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[Revision:1]
[Copyright:Public Domain - Copyright Expired]
[Source:Project Gutenberg]
[Abstract:Short story - A spectacular escape of a prisoner from the executioner's rope during the American Civil War.]




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 feel 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