One Of The Missing

by Ambrose Bierce

Jerome Searing, a private soldier of General Sherman's army, thenconfronting the enemy at and about Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, turned hisback upon a small group of officers with whom he had been talking in lowtones, stepped across a light line of earthworks, and disappeared in aforest. None of the men in line behind the work had said a word to him, norhad he so much as nodded to them in passing, but all who saw understoodthat this brave man had been intrusted with some perilous duty. JeromeSearing, though a private, did not serve in the ranks; he was detailed forservice at division headquarters, being borne upon the rolls as an orderly."Orderly" is a word covering a multitude of duties. An orderly may be amessenger, a clerk, an officer's servant--anything. He may perform servicesfor which no provision is made in orders and army regulations. Their naturemay depend upon his aptitude, upon favor, upon accident. Private Searing,an incomparable marksman, young, hardy, intelligent and insensible to fear,was a scout. The general commanding his division was not content to obeyorders blindly without knowing what was in his front, even when his commandwas not on detached service, but formed a fraction of the line of the army;nor was he satisfied to receive his knowledge of his vis-a-vis through thecustomary channels; he wanted to know more than he was apprised of by thecorps commander and the collisions of pickets and skirmishers. Hence JeromeSearing, with his extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp eyes, andtruthful tongue. On this occasion his instructions were simple: to get asnear the enemy's lines as possible and learn all that he could.In a few moments he had arrived at the picketline, the men on duty therelying in groups of two and four behind little banks of earth scooped out ofthe slight depression in which they lay, their rifles protruding from thegreen boughs with which they had masked their small defenses. The forestextended without a break toward the front, so solemn and silent that onlyby an effort of the imagination could it be conceived as populous witharmed men, alert and vigilant--a forest formidable with possibilities ofbattle. Pausing a moment in one of these rifle-pits to apprise the men ofhis intention Searing crept stealthily forward on his hands and knees andwas soon lost to view in a dense thicket of underbrush."That is the last of him," said one of the men; "I wish I had his rifle;those fellows will hurt some of us with it."Searing crept on, taking advantage of every accident of ground and growthto give himself better cover. His eyes penetrated everywhere, his ears tooknote of every sound. He stilled his breathing, and at the cracking of atwig beneath his knee stopped his progress and hugged the earth. It wasslow work, but not tedious; the danger made it exciting, but by no physicalsigns was the excitement manifest. His pulse was as regular, his nerveswere as steady as if he were trying to trap a sparrow."It seems a long time," he thought, "but I cannot have come very far; I amstill alive."He smiled at his own method of estimating distance, and crept forward. Amoment later he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth and laymotionless, minute after minute. Through a narrow opening in the bushes hehad caught sight of a small mound of yellow clay--one of the enemy'srifle-pits. After some little time he cautiously raised his head, inch byinch, then his body upon his hands, spread out on each side of him, all thewhile intently regarding the hillock of clay. In another moment he was uponhis feet, rifle in hand, striding rapidly forward with little attempt atconcealment. He had rightly interpreted the signs, whatever they were; theenemy was gone.To assure himself beyond a doubt before going back to report upon soimportant a matter, Searing pushed forward across the line of abandonedpits, running from cover to cover in the more open forest, his eyesvigilant to discover possible stragglers. He came to the edge of aplantation--one of those forlorn, deserted homesteads of the last years ofthe war, upgrown with brambles, ugly with broken fences and desolate withvacant buildings having blank apertures in place of doors and windows.After a keen reconnaissance from the safe seclusion of a clump of youngpines Searing ran lightly across a field and through an orchard to a smallstructure which stood apart from the other farm buildings, on a slightelevation. This he thought would enable him to overlook a large scope ofcountry in the direction that he supposed the enemy to have taken inwithdrawing. This building, which had originally consisted of a single roomelevated upon four posts about ten feet high, was now little more than aroof; the floor had fallen away, the joists and planks loosely piled on theground below or resting on end at various angles, not wholly torn fromtheir fastening above. The supporting posts were themselves no longervertical. It looked as if the whole edifice would go down at the touch of afinger.Concealing himself in the dbris of joists and flooring Searing lookedacross the open ground between his point of view and a spur of KennesawMountain, a half-mile away. A road leading up and across this spur wascrowded with troops--the rear-guard of the retiring enemy, their gun-barrelsgleaming in the morning sunlight.Searing had now learned all that he could hope to know. It was his duty toreturn to his own command with all possible speed and report his discovery.But the gray column of Confederates toiling up the mountain road wassingularly tempting. His rifle--an ordinary "Springfield," but fitted with aglobe sight and hair-trigger--would easily send its ounce and a quarter oflead hissing into their midst. That would probably not affect the durationand result of the war, but it is the business of a soldier to kill. It isalso his habit if he is a good soldier. Searing cocked his rifle and "set"the trigger.But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was notto murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the Confederateretreat to be announced by him. For countless ages events had been somatching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some parts ofwhich, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the acts whichhe had in will would have marred the harmony of the pattern. Sometwenty-five years previously the Power charged with the execution of thework according to the design had provided against that mischance by causingthe birth of a certain male child in a little village at the foot of theCarpathian Mountains, had carefully reared it, supervised its education,directed its desires into a military channel, and in due time made it anofficer of artillery. By the concurrence of an infinite number of favoringinfluences and their preponderance over an infinite number of opposingones, this officer of artillery had been made to commit a breach ofdiscipline and flee from his native country to avoid punishment. He hadbeen directed to New Orleans (instead of New York), where a recruitingofficer awaited him on the wharf. He was enlisted and promoted, and thingswere so ordered that he now commanded a Confederate battery some two milesalong the line from where Jerome Searing, the Federal scout, stood cockinghis rifle. Nothing had been neglected--at every step in the progress of boththese men's lives, and in the lives of their contemporaries of theirancestors, the right thing had been done to bring about the desired result.Had anything in all this vast concatenation been overlooked Private Searingmight have fired on the retreating Confederates that morning, and wouldperhaps have missed. As it fell out, a Confederate captain of artillery,having nothing better to do while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off,amused himself by sighting a field-piece obliquely to his right at what hemistook for some Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and dischargedit. The shot flew high of its mark.As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer of his rifle and with his eyes uponthe distant Confederates considered where he could plant his shot with thebest hope of making a widow or an orphan or a childless mother,--perhaps allthree, for Private Searing, although he had repeatedly refused promotion,was not without a certain kind of ambition,--he heard a rushing sound in theair, like that made by the wings of a great bird swooping down upon itsprey. More quickly than he could apprehend the gradation, it increased to ahoarse and horrible roar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out ofthe sky, striking with a deafening impact one of the posts supporting theconfusion of timbers above him, smashing it into matchwood, and bringingdown the crazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds of blinding dust!When Jerome Searing recovered consciousness he did not at once understandwhat had occurred. It was, indeed, some time before he opened his eyes. Fora while he believed that he had died and been buried, and he tried torecall some portions of the burial service. He thought that his wife waskneeling upon his grave, adding her weight to that of the earth upon hisbreast. The two of them, widow and earth, had crushed his coffin. Unlessthe children should persuade her to go home he would not much longer beable to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. "I cannot speak to her," hethought; "the dead have no voice; and if I open my eyes I shall get themfull of earth."He opened his eyes. A great expanse of blue sky, rising from a fringe ofthe tops of trees. In the foreground, shutting out some of the trees, ahigh, dun mound, angular in outline and crossed by an intricate,patternless system of straight lines; the whole an immeasurable distanceaway--a distance so inconceivably great that it fatigued him, and he closedhis eyes. The moment that he did so he was conscious of an insufferablelight. A sound was in his ears like the low, rhythmic thunder of a distantsea breaking in successive waves upon the beach, and out of this noise,seeming a part of it, or possibly coming from beyond it, and intermingledwith its ceaseless undertone, came the articulate words: "Jerome Searing,you are caught like a rat in a trap--in a trap, trap, trap."Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black darkness, an infinitetranquillity, and Jerome Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood, andwell assured of the trap that he was in, remembering all and nowisealarmed, again opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the strength of hisenemy, to plan his defense.He was caught in a reclining posture, his back firmly supported by a solidbeam. Another lay across his breast, but he had been able to shrink alittle away from it so that it no longer oppressed him, though it wasimmovable. A brace joining it at an angle had wedged him against a pile ofboards on his left, fastening the arm on that side. His legs, slightlyparted and straight along the ground, were covered upward to the knees witha mass of dbris which towered above his narrow horizon. His head was asrigidly fixed as in a vise; he could move his eyes, his chin--no more. Onlyhis right arm was partly free. "You must help us out of this," he said toit. But he could not get it from under the heavy timber athwart his chest,nor move it outward more than six inches at the elbow.Searing was not seriously injured, nor did he suffer pain. A smart rap onthe head from a flying fragment of the splintered post, incurredsimultaneously with the frightfully sudden shock to the nervous system, hadmomentarily dazed him. His term of unconsciousness, including the period ofrecovery, during which he had had the strange fancies, had probably notexceeded a few seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not wholly clearedaway as he began an intelligent survey of the situation.With his partly free right hand he now tried to get hold of the beam thatlay across, but not quite against, his breast. In no way could he do so. Hewas unable to depress the shoulder so as to push the elbow beyond that edgeof the timber which was nearest his knees; failing in that, he could notraise the forearm and hand to grasp the beam. The brace that made an anglewith it downward and backward prevented him from doing anything in thatdirection, and between it and his body the space was not half so wide asthe length of his forearm. Obviously he could not get his hand under thebeam nor over it; the hand could not, in fact, touch it at all. Havingdemonstrated his inability, he desisted, and began to think whether hecould reach any of the dbris piled upon his legs.In surveying the mass with a view to determining that point, his attentionwas arrested by what seemed to be a ring of shining metal immediately infront of his eyes. It appeared to him at first to surround some perfectlyblack substance, and it was somewhat more than a half-inch in diameter. Itsuddenly occurred to his mind that the blackness was simply shadow and thatthe ring was in fact the muzzle of his rifle protruding from the pile ofdbris. He was not long in satisfying himself that this was so--if it was asatisfaction. By closing either eye he could look a little way along thebarrel--to the point where it was hidden by the rubbish that held it. Hecould see the one side, with the corresponding eye, at apparently the sameangle as the other side with the other eye. Looking with the right eye, theweapon seemed to be directed at a point to the left of his head, and viceversa. He was unable to see the upper surface of the barrel, but could seethe under surface of the stock at a slight angle. The piece was, in fact,aimed at the exact centre of his forehead.In the perception of this circumstance, in the recollection that justpreviously to the mischance of which this uncomfortable situation was theresult he had cocked the rifle and set the trigger so that a touch woulddischarge it, Private Searing was affected with a feeling of uneasiness.But that was as far as possible from fear; he was a brave man, somewhatfamiliar with the aspect of rifles from that point of view, and of cannontoo. And now he recalled, with something like amusement, an incident of hisexperience at the storming of Missionary Ridge, where, walking up to one ofthe enemy's embrasures from which he had seen a heavy gun throw chargeafter charge of grape among the assailants he had thought for a moment thatthe piece had been withdrawn; he could see nothing in the opening but abrazen circle. What that was he had understood just in time to step asideas it pitched another peck of iron down that swarming slope. To facefirearms is one of the commonest incidents in a soldier's life--firearms,too, with malevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier isfor. Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, andturned away his eyes.After groping, aimless, with his right hand for a time he made anineffectual attempt to release his left. Then he tried to disengage hishead, the fixity of which was the more annoying from his ignorance of whatheld it. Next he tried to free his feet, but while exerting the powerfulmuscles of his legs for that purpose it occurred to him that a disturbanceof the rubbish which held them might discharge the rifle; how it could haveendured what had already befallen it he could not understand, althoughmemory assisted him with several instances in point. One in particular herecalled, in which in a moment of mental abstraction he had clubbed hisrifle and beaten out another gentleman's brains, observing afterward thatthe weapon which he had been diligently swinging by the muzzle was loaded,capped, and at full clock--knowledge of which circumstance would doubtlesshave cheered his antagonist to longer endurance. He had always smiled inrecalling that blunder of his "green and salad days" as a soldier, but nowhe did not smile. He turned his eyes again to the muzzle of the rifle andfor a moment fancied that it had moved; it seemed somewhat nearer.Again he looked away. The tops of the distant trees beyond the bounds ofthe plantation interested him: he had not before observed how light andfeathery they were, nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among theirbranches, where they somewhat paled it with their green; above him itappeared almost black. "It will be uncomfortably hot here," he thought, "asthe day advances. I wonder which way I am looking."Judging by such shadows as he could see, he decided that his face was duenorth; he would at least not have the sun in his eyes, and north--well, thatwas toward his wife and children."Bah!" he exclaimed aloud, "what have they to do with it?"He closed his eyes. "As I can't get out I may as well go to sleep. Therebels are gone and some of our fellows are sure to stray out hereforaging. They'll find me."But he did not sleep. Gradually he became sensible of a pain in hisforehead--a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more andmore uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone--closed them and itreturned. "The devil!" he said, irrelevantly, and stared again at the sky.He heard the singing of birds, the strange metallic note of the meadowlark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He fell into pleasantmemories of his childhood, played again with his brother and sister, racedacross the fields, shouting to alarm the sedentary larks, entered thesombre forest beyond and with timid steps followed the faint path to GhostRock, standing at last with audible heart-throbs before Dead Man's Cave andseeking to penetrate its awful mystery. For the first time he observed thatthe opening of the haunted cavern was encircled by a ring of metal. Thenall else vanished and left him gazing into the barrel of his rifle asbefore. But whereas before it had seemed near, it now seemed aninconceivable distance away, and all the more sinister for that. He criedout and, startled by something in his own voice--the note of fear--lied tohimself in denial: "If I don't sing out I may stay here till I die."He now made no further attempt to evade the menacing stare of the gunbarrel. If he turned away his eyes an instant it was to look for assistance(although he could not see the ground on either side the ruin), and hepermitted them to return, obedient to the imperative fascination. If heclosed them it was from weariness, and instantly the poignant pain in hisforehead--the prophecy and menace of the bullet--forced him to reopen them.The tension of nerve and brain was too severe; nature came to his reliefwith intervals of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of these he becamesensible of a sharp, smarting pain in his right hand, and when he workedhis fingers together, or rubbed his palm with them, he could feel that theywere wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew thesensation; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten it againstthe jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it full of splinters. Heresolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was a plain, commonsoldier, had no religion and not much philosophy; he could not die like ahero, with great and wise last words, even if there had been some one tohear them, but he could die "game," and he would. But if he could only knowwhen to expect the shot!Some rats which had probably inhabited the shed came sneaking andscampering about. One of them mounted the pile of debris that held therifle; another followed and another. Searing regarded them at first withindifference, then with friendly interest; then, as the thought flashedinto his bewildered mind that they might touch the trigger of his rifle, hecursed them and ordered them to go away. "It is no business of yours," hecried.The creatures went away; they would return later, attack his face, gnawaway his nose, cut his throat--he knew that, but he hoped by that time to bedead.Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the little ring of metal with itsblack interior. The pain in his forehead was fierce and incessant. He feltit gradually penetrating the brain more and more deeply, until at last itsprogress was arrested by the wood at the back of his head. It grewmomentarily more insufferable: he began wantonly beating his lacerated handagainst the splinters again to counteract that horrible ache. It seemed tothrob with a slow, regular recurrence, each pulsation sharper than thepreceding, and sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt the fatal bullet.No thoughts of home, of wife and children, of country, of glory. The wholerecord of memory was effaced. The world had passed away--not a vestigeremained. Here in this confusion of timbers and boards is the soleuniverse. Here is immortality in time--each pain an everlasting life. Thethrobs tick off eternities.Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the formidable enemy, the strong,resolute warrior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was fallen; his eyesprotruded; he trembled in every fibre; a cold sweat bathed his entire body;he screamed with fear. He was not insane--he was terrified.In groping about with his torn and bleeding hand he seized at last a stripof board, and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel with his body,and by bending his elbow as much as the contracted space would permit, hecould draw it a few inches at a time. Finally it was altogether loosenedfrom the wreckage covering his legs; he could lift it clear of the groundits whole length. A great hope came into his mind: perhaps he could work itupward, that is to say backward, far enough to lift the end and push asidethe rifle; or, if that were too tightly wedged, so place the strip of boardas to deflect the bullet. With this object he passed it backward inch byinch, hardly daring to breathe lest that act somehow defeat his intent, andmore than ever unable to remove his eyes from the rifle, which mightperhaps now hasten to improve its waning opportunity. Something at leasthad been gained: in the occupation of his mind in this attempt atself-defense he was less sensible of the pain in his head and had ceased towince. But he was still dreadfully frightened and his teeth rattled likecastanets.The strip of board ceased to move to the suasion of his hand. He tugged atit with all his strength, changed the direction of its length all he could,but it had met some extended obstruction behind him and the end in frontwas still too far away to clear the pile of debris and reach the muzzle ofthe gun. It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the trigger guard, which,uncovered by the rubbish, he could imperfectly see with his right eye. Hetried to break the strip with his hand, but had no leverage. In his defeat,all his terror returned, augmented tenfold. The black aperture of the rifleappeared to threaten a sharper and more imminent death in punishment of hisrebellion. The track of the bullet through his head ached with an intenseranguish. He began to tremble again.Suddenly he became composed. His tremor subsided. He clenched his teeth anddrew down his eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of defense; a newdesign had shaped itself in his mind--another plan of battle. Raising thefront end of the strip of board, he carefully pushed it forward through thewreckage at the side of the rifle until it pressed against the triggerguard. Then he moved the end slowly outward until he could feel that it hadcleared it, then, closing his eyes, thrust it against the trigger with allhis strength! There was no explosion; the rifle had been discharged as itdropped from his hand when the building fell. But it did its work.Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of the picket-guard on that part ofthe line through which his brother Jerome had passed on his mission, satwith attentive ears in his breastwork behind the line. Not the faintestsound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the barking of a squirrel, the noiseof the wind among the pines--all were anxiously noted by his overstrainedsense. Suddenly, directly in front of his line, he heard a faint, confusedrumble, like the clatter of a falling building translated by distance. Thelieutenant mechanically looked at his watch. Six o'clock and eighteenminutes. At the same moment an officer approached him on foot from the rearand saluted."Lieutenant," said the officer, "the colonel directs you to move forwardyour line and feel the enemy if you find him. If not, continue the advanceuntil directed to halt. There is reason to think that the enemy hasretreated."The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; the other officer retired. In amoment the men, apprised of their duty by the non-commissioned officers inlow tones, had deployed from their rifle-pits and were moving forward inskirmishing order, with set teeth and beating hearts.This line of skirmishers sweeps across the plantation toward the mountain.They pass on both sides of the wrecked building, observing nothing. At ashort distance in their rear their commander comes. He casts his eyescuriously upon the ruin and sees a dead body half buried in board andtimbers. It is so covered with dust that its clothing is Confederate gray.Its face is yellowish white; the checks are fallen in, the temples sunken,too, with sharp ridges about them, making the forehead forbiddingly narrow;the upper lip, slightly lifted, shows the white teeth, rigidly clenched.The hair is heavy with moisture, the face as wet as the dewy grass allabout. From his point of view the officer does not observe the rifle; theman was apparently killed by the fall of the building."Dead a week," said the officer curtly, moving on and absently pulling outhis watch as if to verify his estimate of time. Six o'clock and fortyminutes.

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