When your smartphone drops from $299 ($199 with contract) to $79 over a summer, you have to wonder what’s going on. Two rumors are circulating this AM, one that Palm is laying off folks, perhaps in the Windows Mobile team.

UPDATE from Palm: “We are not laying people off. As we continue our transformation we are better aligning our staff with our business objectives.”

The estimated sales for the Pre topped out at somewhere under the 810,000 range (Palm reports it sold 810K units last quarter and states at least half of those where Pres) at the end of August and they went from $299 ($199 with contract) to about $79 in about eleven weeks. While this might be normal for a feature phone – the subsidy kicks in once they’re sure that the early adopters who simply must have the LG Chocolate have had their fix – this isn’t good for a smartphone that was supposed to be the lead invasion force for a new WebOS smartphone renaissance.

Finally, Palm has backed off over iTunes Syncing. The latest WebOS update doesn’t sync with iTunes and won’t be syncing with iTunes any time soon. After using brute force and then running to the USB standards body, the company may have finally given up.

The end of Palm will come quickly this time. They’ve been idling for too long – since about 2004, in fact – and if they can’t push through their first year with at least some modicum of success it’s over.

For more info about Palm’s numbers check out Jason’s post about the 810K figure.

This deal is of course for new subscribers that sign a 2-year agreement, but the end price is the cheapest we’ve seen yet. With prices this low, it kind of makes you wonder how much the Pre’s little brother, the upcoming Pixi, will be when it’s finally available. [Walmart via everythingpre]

Amazon has been known to offer cell phones at cut-rate prices. Just the other day, all AT&T phones except for ones that start with the letter “i” were a penny on Amazon. But today, you can save $50 off the retail price and snag a Palm Pre for only one bill.

This deal is of course for new subscribers that sign a two-year agreement, but $50 bucks is $50 bucks in my book. Or if you were planning on buying one for the misses, both can be had for only $200, which in turns saves you $100. I say go for it, unless, of course, you’re waiting for the Palm Pixi…

Other countries should be just about the same. Click through for the UK release.

O2 today confirms that the Palm® Pre™ phone will be available in the UK on 16 October exclusively on the O2 network. Customers can purchase the new device directly from O2, the Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U and Business partners who are part of O2’s specific partner programme. It will also be available for purchase online from the O2 shop at www.o2.co.uk/shop.

www.o2.co.uk/palmpre

Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefonica O2 UK said “Today’s announcement reinforces O2’s position as the home of the smartphone. With the addition of the excellent Palm Pre to our already extensive portfolio, we will continue to offer our customers the widest range of the very best devices on the market today.”

“There’s a lot of excitement about Palm Pre in Europe as we continue to expand Palm webOS products across new carriers and countries,” said Jon Rubinstein chairman and chief executive officer, Palm, Inc. “We look forward to launching Palm Pre with O2 so people in the UK can see firsthand how Palm webOS offers a new and better smartphone experience.”

Palm Pre for consumers

Palm Pre is free to O2 customers taking out a 24-month contract and to customers taking an 18-month contract at £44.05 or £73.41 per month. See attached table or the O2 website for full tariff options. All customers will receive unlimited UK data browsing over O2’s HSDPA network and unlimited access to 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots through both The Cloud and now BT Openzone.

The Palm Pre will also be sold with some innovative accessories. The Palm Touchstone Charging Dock allows connectionless charging of your Palm webOS™ phone. Palm Touchstone is based on inductive technology based inside the Touchstone Charging Dock which allows you to charge the handset without connecting a wire directly to it. The Touchstone and Back Cover will retail at £44.11 a saving of £10.

Palm Pre for Business

Palm Pre running Palm webOS is a powerful business device, offering Palm Synergy features, multitasking capabilities, a full sliding keyboard, touch screen, robust messaging, GPS, and compatibility with 3G and secure Wi-Fi networks. It delivers business capabilities, including support for Exchange ActiveSync policies.

Palm Pre will be available on current O2 business tariffs as a monthly bolt on, with the device available for free to account holders on all business tariffs from £30.91on a 24 or 36-month contract. Palm Pre business customers can also receive the same benefits as existing O2 business customers including unlimited calls between O2 customers, unlimited calls to ten landlines, shareable minutes and texts between users plus multi-user billing and activation and free, 24×7 access to business customer care specialists. www.o2.co.uk/business

Palm Pre is the first phone based on the all-new Palm webOS™ software, which brings mobile applications together in a unique and intuitive multi-tasking platform that enables consumers and businesses to connect to their information in more useful and useable ways.(1) Palm webOS introduces Palm Synergy™, which brings your information from the many places it resides into a single, more comprehensive view of your life.

The Palm Pre features a smooth, elegantly rounded ergonomic design and a physical keyboard that slides out only when needed, Palm Pre is engineered to feel natural in your hand and comfortably small in your pocket. When closed, Palm Pre is ideal for phone calls, web browsing, music, photos and videos; when open, Palm Pre is optimized for email and text messaging. With its curved slider and gesture-controlled touch interface, Palm Pre fuses exquisite design with the revolutionary Palm webOS software for fast access to content on the device or web.

You get the feeling that Palm had something to hide today. On the surface that makes no sense, considering it officially announced the Pixi, the company’s second webOS-based phone, this morning. (The company’s first webOS phone, the Pre, launched to much fanfare last June, owing to an almost Bill Goldberg winning streak-like level of hype.) But as you’re already aware, Apple had an announcement or two of its own today, including the inclusion of a digital camera on the iPod nano. It’s unfortunate, but Apple events are really the black holes of this industry: on Apple event days, no other tech news can escape out into the wild. That is to say, unless your company name is Apple, Inc., you’d be better served laying low for the day, and make any announcements later in the week.

So what is the Palm Pixi? It’s a phone, yes, and one that will be available on Sprint, and only Sprint, before the Holidays. (Whether or not Pixi eventually makes its way to other carriers in unknown right now. Palm’s keeping mum on that type of talk.) Like the Pre (and iPhone), it uses a multi-touch touchscreen interface. Also like the Pre (and also unlike the iPhone), it has a physical QWERTY keyboard. What you prefer is just that, a preference, but let the record show that I do, indeed, fancy a physical keyboard over a virtual one. There’s nothing wrong with buttons, no matter what Steve Jobs would have you believe. The Pixi also supports EVDO Rev. A, so it should be plenty fast for you guys. (Unless, of course, you live in a modern country, with an equally modern infrastructure, and laugh at us poor Americans who have to put up with 3G/EVDO!) It also runs webOS, the same not-too-shabby-at-all operating system found on the Pre. So it’s safe to say, in my brief time with the phone this morning, that if you like webOS and/or the Pre, you’ll probably like the Pixi.

That’s where the similarities between the Pre and Pixi end. And to be fair, those are huge similarities: both use the same operating system (which is a nothing it not functional) and similar touchscreen wizardry, the two most noticeable character traits of a phone, aside from carrier and coverage, something which Palm has little control over. (It can’t help it if Sprint stinks in your area, just like how RIM can’t help that T-Mobile stinks in mine.) The most immediate difference, obviously, is the overall shape of the device. The keyboard doesn’t slide out this time around, but rather is ever present. It definitely feels less, I don’t know, “fancy” to have an always exposed keyboard. It’s sort of like those crazy sports cars that have front lights that recess into the body, versus a standard family sedan.

The Pixi is longer than a folded-up Pre, but not as wide. It’s also lighter by a few grams. So, yes, smaller.

Where did it loose all that girth, if you can even call it that? Well, the screen is smaller than the Pre’s by 80 pixels. In practice, this means that, for example, fewer names can be displayed on a contact list, which translates into one or two more finger swipers per round trip, if you know what I mean. Some aspects of the UI have also been tweaked to accommodate the smaller screen. It’s not something that the average person is going to notice and freak out over, but I’m sure it’ll make a bullet point on some silly cellphone message board argument.

That’s who this phone is targeted at, by the way, more everyman than tech addict. The reason why there’s no fold-out keyboard is to give people immediate access to text messages, Twitter updates, Facebook silliness, etc. (That was one of the complaints I saw during the first round of Pre reviews, that since the keyboard was always recessed, the phone didn’t feel as “immediate” as people would have wanted. The things people complain about, I tell ya.) In a sense, it’s a very capable first smartphone that you might give someone, or recommend they buy. What kills me, though, is that there’s no Wi-Fi.

I repeat: there’s no Wi-Fi. That’s right, a would-be smartphone in 2009 (nearly 2010!) doesn’t have a feature that’s become so commonplace that now even Verizon Wireless phones support it. (Oh, burn!) Does the lack of Wi-Fi kill the experience? No, of course not, but using the debate skills I learned on The Simpsons: Come on. Come on! You cannot market a whiz-bang, golly gee phone today and expect to get away with not including Wi-Fi. At least not from the likes of us. That said, I doubt too many of the everymen who this is targeted at will give a damn, to be honest.

So why did I open this with an ominous phrase? Two reasons. One, there’s nothing really new here, per se; it’s the Pre, just parred down. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but we’re all so damn conditioned to appreciate only the shiniest and newest that maybe Palm wasn’t so smitten this time around. Two, as all the Apple haters know, today is unequivocally Apple Day. If Palm was so confident in the Pixi’s ability to “wow” you all, then why would it wait to this week to make any sort of announcement? Push the announcement back a week, and you have the whole tech press devouring every morsel of Pixi news.

As it stands, we’re currently working on post 9 billion on What the iPod Means in 2009, so to say that the Pixi may initially get lost in the shuffle is a bit of an understatement.

So, again, if you like webOS, there’s no real reason why you wouldn’t like the Pixi. And if you don’t like the lack of Wi-Fi or always visible keyboard, that’s why there’s the Pre, which is now $149. Pricing for the Pixi will be revealed as we approach the actual release date, which is currently penciled in for the Holidays.

Reuters,

“The offer of a port-in service credit of $100 to new customers who buy the Palm Pre has been pulled, because it was put into the system in error,” Sprint spokesman James Fisher said.

Apparently the company was considering the offer, but didn’t intend for anyone outside the walled garden to know about it. Too bad Sprint pulled the offer though, otherwise the Palm Pre could be had for only $50 now that the official Sprint price has dropped to $150 in light of the Pixi announcement.

There have been a few rumors about Sprint cutting the price of the Palm Pre the last few days. Those might still work out, but until then there is this deal. There is a lot of fine print with the offer, but if you’ve been eyeing a Palm Pre, you should definitely see if you qualify.

• Could include a $36 activiation fee per line
• Excludes existing customers
• Must transfer a number from an active wireless line
• The new line must be active for 30 days
• Ends on 10/10/09
• It will be applied to your account within three invoices

Sprint via Giz

That was quick. Forget about the rumor, the redesigned HTC Hero will launch on October 11 at $180 after a $50 mail-in rebate. And yes, that’s $20 under Sprint’s guided missile, the Palm Pre. So let’s recap, Sprint will soon be the only carrier with three of the hottest cellphones: the BlackBerry Tour, the Palm Pre, and the HTC Hero. And the carrier has some of the most reasonably priced plans. Nice.

Sprint’s first device with the Android™ platform available Oct. 11;
Pre-register for HTC Hero today at www.sprint.com/hero

OVERLAND PARK, Kan., and BELLEVUE, Wash. – Sept. 3, 2009 – Sprint (NYSE: S) and HTC Corporation today announced the upcoming arrival of the first wireless device offering the combination of the open and innovative Android platform with the high-speed connectivity of America’s most dependable 3G network1 (EVDO Rev. A), HTC Hero™ with Google™. Offering a rich mobile Internet experience, the much-anticipated HTC Hero offers synchronization for built-in Google mobile services, including Google Search™, Google Maps™, Gmail™, and YouTube™ as well as access to thousands of applications built on the Android platform.

Beginning on Oct. 11, customers will be able to purchase HTC Hero through all Sprint retail channels including Web (www.sprint.com), Telesales (1-800-SPRINT1) and our national retail partner Best Buy for $179.99 (excluding taxes) after a $50 instant savings and a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year service agreement. Pre-registration begins today at www.sprint.com/hero.

Access to countless applications
As a charter member of the Open Handset Alliance™, Sprint is actively engaged with the Android community. Through Android Market™, HTC Hero users have access to more than 8,000 useful applications, widgets and fun games to download and install on their phone, with many more to come. Thousands of developers are working to introduce new Android applications every day.

Intuitive, user-focused and fun
HTC Hero is the first U.S. device to feature HTC Sense, an intuitive experience that was built with a guiding philosophy to put people at the center and allows the device to be completely customized to the wants and needs of the user. The device’s seven-panel wide home screen can be populated with customizable widgets that bring information to the surface.

HTC Hero users can easily create and switch between Scenes to reflect different moments or roles in their lives, such as work, social, travel and play. For example, a work Scene can be easily set up to include stock updates, work email and calendar, a play Scene could have music, weather, and a Twitter feed or a travel Scene could offer instant access to the local time, weather and maps.

Industry-leading features
HTC Hero features an integrated 5.0 MP camera and camcorder. It also offers easy access to personal and business e-mail, instant messaging and text messaging through POP, IMAP, and Exchange Active Sync accounts.

HTC Hero is a full-featured smartphone with Wi-Fi capability, a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with pinch-to-zoom capability and a fingerprint resistant coating, integrated GPS navigation, and trackball navigation. Additional features include:
Stereo Bluetooth® 2.0 Wireless technology
accelerometer, light sensor and home screen widgets for improved usability
multimedia capable with microSD slot (32GB capable, 2GB included)
Sprint TV® with live and on-demand programming
NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup MobileSM
easy access to social networking sites, including Facebook®, Flickr® and Twitter
visual voice mail for quick and easy access to specific voice mail messages

HTC Hero requires activation on a pricing plan offering unlimited data. Sprint’s Simply EverythingSM plan provides unlimited nationwide calling, texting, e-mail, social networking, Web browsing, GPS navigation, Sprint TV, streaming music, NFL Mobile Live, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile and much more for only $99.99 per month. That’s a savings of $1,200 over two years vs. a comparable AT&T iPhone® plan2. Sprint Everything Data plans with unlimited messaging and data start at just $69.99 for 450 minutes with unlimited night and weekend calling starting at 7 p.m. (All price plans exclude Sprint surcharges and taxes.)

You know what Canada looks like? It looks like the best part of town – where everyone is cool and gets drunk all the time without hangovers and where you used to go to raves when you were like 16 and now when you go back the rave places have grown up with you and become chocolate shops and classic book stores – but it looks like that all over the country.

Anyway, this commercial for the Palm Pre in Canadia (in order of importance) shows roller derby, some kind of old persons ball game, and the Palm Pre. The resulting footing, led by an amiable guy in a tie, tells me more about the Pre than Ms. Freakyhead ever did. Good job, Canada! Too bad you’re monarchist communards or I’d totally be living up there.

via Giz

Hmmm, where have I seen this ad before? It looks a lot different than the weird Palm ad spots shown here in the States, so that’s not it. There isn’t a dude in a creepy king costume, I don’t think it’s reminding me of Burger King. Oh, wait, I know. It’s a combination of these two ads.

Pre-thinking brings us the latest Tamara Hope Pre Ad with young Tamara talking more to her Pre than directly at us.

Interestingly, Tamara looks much better when she isn’t Palm’s ghoulish Pre homunculus. Click through for a pleasant surprise.

Yeah, those analysts, always eager to put out their opinion, say that Palm’s technology is falling way short of where it could be. The real market, they say, is in high speed charging using so-called “super capacitors,” allowing users to quickly charge their devices. In their not so humble opinion, the current technology came at a high price (despite only costing a few dollars to make), and offers “little benefit to users on its own.”

Sure, the concept of a fast 10 minute charge amping up your device for the day like an electronic version of an energy drink sounds good, but didn’t this big analyst (who wants $899 for the full report by the way) think that Palm considered that? I mean, if the technology was there to make it happen, wouldn’t Palm have used it? I love the concept of a technology analyst. They’re like a movie critic, can’t act, but they sure can complain.

[via Slashgear]

Didja hear that RadioShack is rebranding? The hoopla will of course include some sales to drive traffic. Apparently the Pre will be part of this upcoming sale and will be only $150 for new customers. Nice.

We’ve seen it lower thanks to a Best Buy snafu and one website offering a one day rebate, but this might be the first legitimate price cut on the Pre. Now just to be clear, this is for new Sprint customers. Current subscibers eligable for equipment upgrades will still have to pay $219 for the handset, which is $20 more than what you’ll pay at a Sprint store, natch.

Advertising and branding are very complicated and very unpredictable fields, and success can be measured according to any number of metrics. Modernista, the ad agency behind the soft-talking-lady ads that only occasionally seem to be talking about phones, seem to be measuring success based on attention. Of course, the attention is almost entirely negative, but that doesn’t faze them.

In an article in Ad Age, Executive Creative Director at Modernista, Gary Koepke, discusses the oft-maligned “Ms. Hope” spots.

The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing. Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.

“Polarizing” is industry-standard code for “universally mocked,” in case you’re confused.

There’s nobody involved in an iPhone ad, and ‘Your life is on BlackBerry’ — isn’t that great? Instead of having a life? We wanted a middle ground between those two places — what about the people who want a really great smartphone?

Yes, what about those people? I would submit that the first step towards good advertising is knowing your audience. An advertiser must ask first of all, who is the product for and who is the ad for. Is this an ad for women, for men, is it for experts, for novices? In this case, it’s for experts, since he says it’s about people who want a great smartphone. They’re not aiming at the feature-phone set, they’re aiming at established users of smartphones.

Now that that’s established, what is the strategy of the ad? Are you trying to explain? Convert? Attack? Do you want to be direct or indirect? Sell it whole or piecemeal? For Palm, it has to be conversion, because as they’ve always said, this is about taking smartphone users from other platforms (they’ll likely target Eos ads at newer and upgrading users). Let’s see what they came up with.

Okay… so the target is expert smartphone users and the object is conversion, that much was evident from Palm’s strategy and Koepke’s statement. Then why the devil is their ad a soft-spoken lady telling parables about jugglers in the park?

I can only imagine that Modernista felt that Palm’s whole new approach to the smartphone OS required a more meta approach to advertising. But meta-advertising and oblique advertising have a bad reputation for a reason (Welcome to the social, anyone?) — if your meta-idea is difficult to process, your supposedly insidious advertisement gets knocked out of the target brain by the next shiny object that appears on screen.

Welcome to the viral failure

I’m not a director of creative whatever, but as a consumer and writer I’m a special kind of expert on advertising: I know when it’s working on me. And simple observation of the internets after each ad hits reveals that it’s not working on anybody who sees one and can write about it. This wouldn’t be a problem (dumb, weird ads have succeeded before) — except I and people like me, the ones most impervious to this kind of advertisement, are the target audience.

The ads may have been effective if they were promoting something else, I can’t think of what — lotion, maybe, or a really nice oven. Actually, anything with a signal feature that makes it okay to have the majority of a 30-second spot be some lady’s opium-addled face, and only a tiny bit be the product itself (”Woah! Did you see that crazy oven?”). That’s cognitive contrast, and that’s okay if the essence of your product can be gotten across in a moment. Car companies get away with nonsense ads because they show a car. Fragrance ads get away with them because one ad is as good as another when you can’t smell the product. But in Palm’s case, nothing is shown that leads to any comprehension. Just bafflement — and not the kind of bafflement that makes you google things.

This discussion could go on and on, of course, into different theories of this and that, but I think that the smartphone-using set has definitively rejected these ads. They simply don’t work, because the most compelling aspect of Palm’s proposition (the damn phone) is de-emphasized almost to non-existence. And despite the smooth nature of the spots, they don’t fail gracefully.

[via Giz and BGR]

It seems like this deal is exclusive to this retailer as the site is issuing the mail-in rebate itself and not Sprint. You better hurry up and decide if the Pre is right for you though. The deal is only good for today, August 3, 2009.

LetsTalk.com via SlashGear

There is probably a good chance that if you wanted the Palm Pre, you already snagged it at a Sprint store or Best Buy. Amazon now has the smartphone in case though. The on-contract price is the same at $199, but the off-contract price is surprisingly low at only $499. That’s a heck of deal considering the boys in blue have it listed at $749 sans contract. The only kicker is that it will take 4-6 weeks to ship. Sorry.

BBG points us to this Palm Pre commercial remix that forces us to ask the question: Was Tim Robbins dead or dying in the Jacob’s Ladder. Was it like in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge? Why haven’t I watched that movie lately? It was really good.

Even crazier REAL commercial after the jump.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
by Ambrose Bierce

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 fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals 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 acclivity 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 of the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators–a single company of infantry in line, at “parade rest,” the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieu tenant 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.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good–a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing,” then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift–all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by–it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and–he knew not why–apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in 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 toe, 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 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 tow.”

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 fulness–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–saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey 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.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieu. tenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly–with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquillity in the men–with what accurately measured inter vals fell those cruel words:

“Attention, company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!”

Farquhar dived–dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

The officer,” he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”

An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps!

A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

“They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me–the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun.”

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round–spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men–all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color–that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream–the southern bank–and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape–was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which–once, twice, and again–he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue–he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene–perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon–then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.