Now the prisoner could think more clearly.

His hands beat the water and pushed him up to the top. He wanted to put the rope back on his neck. Now he felt the most violent pain he had ever known. But his hands reached the rope on his neck and tore it off. The prisoner did not know what he was doing. How funny to die of hanging at the bottom of a river!' Then he felt his body moving up to the top of the water. He believed the rope had broken and that he was in the river.īut the rope was still around his neck, and his hands were tied. Then, suddenly, he heard a noise…something falling into the water. He could only feel, a feeling of living in a world of pain. There were terrible pains running from his neck down through his body, his arms and his legs.

But then he felt a sharp pain in his neck and could not breathe. Then he dropped him through a hole in the bridge.Īs the prisoner fell, everything seemed black and empty. He made the rope firm around the prisoner's neck. While these thoughts raced through the prisoner's mind, the captain gave the soldiers the order to hang him. My house is outside of their military area, and my wife and children are safe there. I could reach the other side of the river and get home through the forest. I could swim under the water and escape the fire of their guns. 'Then I could get the rope off my neck and jump into the river. 'If I could only free my hands,' he thought. The prisoner quickly opened his eyes and looked at the water. But the sounds he heard were just those of the river running swiftly under the bridge. But they got louder and louder and started to hurt his ears. But, as he tried to think of them, he heard sounds - again and again. He wanted his last thoughts to be of his wife and children. He looked down and saw the water under the bridge. Three soldiers of the northern army stood near the prisoner, waiting for their captain's orders to hang him.Įverybody was ready. The rope was tied to part of the bridge above him. The man's hands were tied behind his back. SHEP O’NEAL: A man stood on a railroad bridge in Alabama looking down into the swift waters of the Owl Creek River below. And everything that happens in the story is really the images in the prisoner's mind just before he dies.

In the last moments of his life, the southern prisoner dreams he has escaped. A group of soldiers is hanging a southern farm owner for trying to stop northern military movements across the Owl Creek Bridge. The occurrence, or event, in our story takes place during the Civil War of the eighteen sixties between the American states of the north and the states of the south. Our story today is called, 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Special English program, AMERICAN STORIES.

An occurrence at owl bridge