It was a bitterly cold night that brought to a close this twenty-fourth day of December. The air outside was still, but the temperature was below zero. Within all was quiet, the servants of Harrowby Hall awaiting with beating hearts the outcome of their master’s campaign against his supernatural visitor.
The master himself was lying on the bed in the haunted room, clad as has already been indicated, and then —
The clock clanged out the hour of twelve.
There was a sudden banging of doors, a blast of cold air swept through the halls, the door leading into the haunted chamber flew open, a splash was heard, and the water ghost was seen standing at the side of the heir of Harrowby, from whose outer dress there streamed rivulets of water, but whose own person deep down under the various garments he wore was as dry and as warm as he could have wished.
‘Ha!’ said the young master of Harrowby. ‘I’m glad to see you.’
‘You are the most original man I’ve met, if that is true,’ returned the ghost. ‘May I ask where did you get that hat?’
‘Certainly, madam,’ returned the master, courteously. ‘It is a little portable observatory I had made for just such emergencies as this. But, tell me, is it true that you are doomed to follow me about for one mortal hour – to stand where I stand, to sit where I sit?’
‘That is my delectable fate,’ returned the lady.
‘We’ll go out on the lake,’ said the master, starting up.
‘You can’t get rid of me that way,’ returned the ghost. ‘The water won’t swallow me up; in fact, it will just add to my present bulk.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said the master, firmly, ‘we will go out on the lake.’
‘But, my dear sir,’ returned the ghost, with a pale reluctance, ‘it is fearfully cold out there. You will be frozen hard before you’ve been out ten minutes.’
‘Oh no, I’ll not,’ replied the master. ‘I am very warmly dressed. Come!’ This last in a tone of command that made the ghost ripple.
And they started.
They had not gone far before the water ghost showed signs of distress.
‘You walk too slowly,’ she said. ‘I am nearly frozen. My knees are so stiff now I can hardly move. I beseech you to accelerate your step.’
‘I should like to oblige a lady,’ returned the master, courteously, ‘but my clothes are rather heavy, and a hundred yards an hour is about my speed. Indeed, I think we would better sit down here on this snowdrift, and talk matters over.’
‘Do not! Do not do so, I beg!’ cried the ghost. ‘Let me move on. I feel myself growing rigid as it is. If we stop here, I shall be frozen stiff.’
‘That, madam,’ said the master slowly, and seating himself on an ice-cake – ‘that is why I have brought you here. We have been on this spot just ten minutes, we have fifty more. Take your time about it, madam, but freeze, that is all I ask of you.’
‘I cannot move my right leg now,’ cried the ghost, in despair, ‘and my overskirt is a solid sheet of ice. Oh, good, kind Mr. Oglethorpe, light a fire, and let me go free from these icy fetters.’
‘Never, madam. It cannot be. I have you at last.’
‘Alas!’ cried the ghost, a tear trickling down her frozen cheek. ‘Help me, I beg. I congeal!’
‘Congeal, madam, congeal!’ returned Oglethorpe, coldly. ‘You have drenched me and mine for two hundred and three years, madam. To-night you have had your last drench.’
‘Ah, but I shall thaw out again, and then you’ll see. Instead of the comfortably tepid, genial ghost I have been in my past, sir, I shall be iced-water,’ cried the lady, threateningly.
‘No, you won’t, either,’ returned Oglethorpe; ‘for when you are frozen quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold-storage warehouse, and there shall you remain an icy work of art forever more.’
‘But warehouses burn.’
‘So they do, but this warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and surrounding it are fire-proof walls, and within those walls the temperature is now and shall forever be 416 degrees below the zero point; low enough to make an icicle of any flame in this world – or the next,’ the master added, with an ill-suppressed chuckle.
‘For the last time let me beseech you. I would go on my knees to you, Oglethorpe, were they not already frozen. I beg of you do not doo – ’
Here even the words froze on the water ghost’s lips and the clock struck one. There was a momentary tremor throughout the ice-bound form, and the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, shone down on the rigid figure of a beautiful woman sculptured in clear, transparent ice. There stood the ghost of Harrowby Hall, conquered by the cold, a prisoner for all time.
The heir of Harrowby had won at last, and to-day in a large storage house in London stands the frigid form of one who will never again flood the house of Oglethorpe with woe and sea-water.
As for the heir of Harrowby, his success in coping with a ghost has made him famous, a fame that still lingers about him, although his victory took place some twenty years ago; and so far from being unpopular with the fair sex, as he was when we first knew him, he has not only been married twice, but is to lead a third bride to the altar before the year is out.
Ambrose Bierce
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Chapter I
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama[7], 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[8], 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.
7
Alabama – the US state in the south (131 334 sq. km); the first Europeans who came there were the Spanish, the first settlement was founded by the French in 1701; after the war of 1763, the territory was ceded to England.
8
the Federal army – the army of the federal government in the American Civil War of 1861–1865 with 11 Southern states.