Story Two An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ⅰ
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his kness. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers1 supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners— two soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff.2 At a short remove3 upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel stood at each end of the bridge. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge;they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot-plank which 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 4 further along. The other bank of the stream was open ground with a single embrasure5 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. 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 centre 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.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his dress, 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 hemp6. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of people,7 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 a pace apart from the plank. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank. 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 8 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 wood—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's 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 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 invaders'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 maturally an orginal secessionist9 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 which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth10, 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 qualification11 assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum12 that all is fair in love and war.13
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a grayclad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was gone to fetch the water, her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
“The Yanks14 are repairing the railroad,” 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 other 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—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, he15 repassed the plantation16, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.17
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 fibre of his body and limbs. 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. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; 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. The noose about his neck was already suffocating him, and kept the water from his lungs. To die hanging at the bottom of a river! —the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the blackness 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 wrists 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 which he had yet experienced. 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 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. 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 very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. 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 —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, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers on the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in sihouette 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, sqattering 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. He observed that it was a gray eye, and remembered having read that gray 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 sing-song now rang out behind him and come across the water with a distinctness that piersed and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Altough no soldier, he had frequented 18 camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant;19 the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words: “Attention, company, —Shoulder arms. —Ready. —Aim. —Fire!”
Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he should. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara,20 yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley,21 and rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal 22. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; 23 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 24 flashed all at once in the sunshine. 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 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 splash within two yards of him, followed by a loud rushing sound,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, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him. The cannon had taken a hand in the game.25 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; “I must keep my eye upon the gun;the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. It is a good gun.”
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top.26 The water, the banks, the forest, 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,27 and was being whirled on, which 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,28 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 gold, 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,29 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 aeolian harps.30 He had no wish to perfect his escape,31 was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whizz 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 sprung to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he travelled, 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 untravelled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the great trees formed a straight wall on both sides. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.32
His neck was in pain, and, lifting his hand to it, he found it horribly swoller. 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 cool air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untravelled avenue! He could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he fell 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 travelled the entire might. 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 bock 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.
Notes
1．sleepers: 铁轨枕木
2．a deputy sheriff: an American local law officer
3．a short remove: a short distance
4．an outpost: a sentinel's station /post further away from the bridge
5．embrasure: hole for cannon shooting
6．whose neck was in the hemp: having the rope around his neck to be hanged
7．The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of people: The military rule (of the time) gives freedom to kill/ hang people, even civilian.
8．his judgment: judgment of the man to be executed
9．secessionist: a person who opposes the union of the North and the South
10．the fall of Corinth: Corinth is to the northeast of the Mississippi, which was taken by the Federalists on May 30, 1862.
11．qualification: knowledge and ability to judge
12．villainous dictum: evil or wrong saying
13．all is fair in love and war: no matter what one does in a love affair or in war (including murdering, cheating, etc.) is right
14．Yanks: Yankees, a name to call the Americans from the North
15．he: the soldier who asked for water
16．the plantation: the plantation of Peyton Farquhar
17．Federal scout: spy of the North
18．had frequented: had often gone to (a place, etc.)
19．that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant: referring here to the loud shout of orders to fire by the lieutenant
20．Niagara: 尼亚加拉大瀑布
21．the volley: a simultaneous discharge of bullets
22．shining bits of metal: bullets
23．One lodged between his collar and neck: One bullet hit him between his collar and neck.
24．ramrods: 枪的通条，推弹杆
25．The cannon had taken a hand in the game: The cannon was also used to fire at Peyton Farquhar.
26．a top: 陀螺
27．in a vortex: in whirling water
28．a sudden arrest of his motion: he suddenly came to a stop
29．he noted a definite order in their arrangement: he noted the garden plants were planted in order, which means he was not in wild woods any more and was near his home
30．aeolian harps: a box-shaped musical instrument with stretched strings
31．perfect his escape: complete his escape
32．an unknown tongue: what was spoken was foreign to him
Questions for discussion
1．What was going to happen on Owl Creek Bridge one day?
2．Who was the man to be executed? And how was he to be executed?
3．Say what you know about the historical background of the story.
4．How did the man come to be caught by the Federalist army?
5．Describe his escape experience as well as you can.
6．Did he really experience floating down the stream pursued by his enemies and their shootings?
Why do you say so? Give textual evidence to prove your point.
7．How does Bierce weave his plot to tell a fantastic story?
About the author
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914? ) was born in Ohio. He served in the Civil War. After the war he worked as a journalist in San Francisco, and in England from 1872-75 for a number of magazines such as Fun. Under the pseudonym Dod Grile he published three collections of sketches and tales: The Fiend's Delight (1873), Nuggets and Dust Panned Out in California (1873), and Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874). Back in California, he continued to work as journalist. His satire and wit made him famous and influential along the Pacific coast. In 1891 he put forward Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, similar to Poe's tales of horror and skillful with surprise endings like O. Henry. A medieval romance The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter came out in 1892, which was followed up by a collection of satirical verses Black Beetles in Amber in the same year. He published more collections of poems and tales, and also from 1909 to 1912 he was engaged in editing his own complete works of 12 volumes. Disappointed with American life, he moved to Mexico in 1913. Ambrose Bierce is considered an important American writer at the turn of the century, next to Mark Twain and abreast of writers like Bret Harte.
Commentary on the plot of this story
This story took place during the Civil War, a bloody war in American history that killed more Americans than any other ensuing wars. In fact, there is originally not much plot going on for a good story, just the execution of a plantation owner of the South by the Federalist troops of the North on Owl Creek Bridge. The captive Peyton Farquhar is a slave master who passionately defends the South against Yankees from the North. Although he is a civilian, he wants to prevent the advance of the enemy by trying to destroy the railway or the bridge. He is deceived by a Federalist scout, a spy in truth, to believe the bridge is lightly guarded. Of course he is caught and sentenced to hanging beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge. How to write an interesting story out of such scanty materials tests a writer's talent and skills. Ambrose Bierce has done an excellent job here. From the moment that the sergeant steps aside to let the plank on which Peyton stands tilt up and, as a result, Peyton drops off and gets hanged, Ambrose Bierce starts to tell how the dying person falls into the water below, breaks free from the rope, struggles with all his might to escape from the soldiers firing at him, finally gets ashore and sees his own house and sweet wife coming to meet him. In this way, about two thirds of the tale forms a good adventure story of the war, exciting and thrilling. Because Peyton's escaping is so realistically depicted—the volleys of bullets, the shouts of the Yankee officer, the vortex of the stream, the difficulty in finding the way in the woods... that the reader is led to believe it as Peyton's real experience until he reads the last sentence, which says Peyton is hanging beneath the bridge swinging, with his neck broken. Then we suddenly realize all that floating in the water, dodging bullets, landing on the south bank and seeing his own house are just hallusinations, very short flashes in the dying man's mind. And Ambrose's fine skills is thus shown by telling this story of a quite complicated plot out of nothing more than a simple hanging execution of a south civilian on the bridge.