Chapter 5 Eagle Creek Bridge

A man stands on a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down at rushing water 20 feet below.The man's hands are behind his back and his wrists are tied with rope.A noose was fastened round his neck, the other end was fastened to a solid sleeper over his head, and the middle part hung loosely to his knees.Several planks were strewn across the sleepers on which the rails lay, on which he and his firing squad stood.A Union Army sergeant, who looked like a peacetime acting sheriff, formed the firing squad with two soldiers under his command.A captain officer in military uniform and with a weapon on his waist stood on this temporary platform.There is a sentinel at each end of the bridge. They stand with their guns, their left arms across their chests, their guns hanging in front of their left shoulders, and their machine guns resting on their arms.On the surface, this posture looks serious, but it is actually extremely unnatural, because the whole body is very straight.The two sentries were indifferent to what happened in the center of the bridge, and their duty seemed to be to guard the platform across the bridge.

There was no one at this end of the bridge except a sentinel, and the iron track went straight on for a hundred yards, into the woods, and then turned a corner and disappeared.There must be outposts in the distance.On the other side of the river was an open field. A row of wooden fences stood on a gentle slope. Rifle holes were dug on the wooden fences, and there was a cannon barrel protruding from it to control the entire bridge deck.Some spectators stood on the slope between the bridge and the bunker, where a group of infantry "rested", with the butts of their guns resting on the ground, the muzzles slightly reclined, leaning on their right shoulders, their hands folded on the guns.On the right side of the line stood a lieutenant, the point of his command knife on the ground, his left hand resting on his right.Except for the four people in the middle of the bridge, everyone stood motionless.The group of infantrymen stared at the iron bridge indifferently with frozen eyes.The two sentinels, facing the river bank, looked like statues adorning the iron bridge.The captain stood there with his hands folded on his chest, silently watching his subordinates work without giving any instructions.The god of death is like a dignitary. When he comes, everyone must greet him with courtesy and treat him as a distinguished guest, even those who are close to him.According to military regulations, respect implies serenity and respect.

From the outside, the man about to be hanged was about thirty-five years old, a commoner.His attire indicates that he was a planter.He was well-proportioned, with a high-bridged nose, a resolute mouth, a broad forehead, and black hair brushed back from behind the ears to the collar of his well-fitting coat.He had a stubby mustache and a goatee, but not sideburns, and large dark gray eyes with a kind expression.It's beyond imagination: a man with a noose around his neck can show such an expression.Clearly, he was no dastardly assassin.Anyway, the military regulations have written provisions for the hanging of all kinds of people, including gentlemen.

Everything was ready, the two soldiers took off the boards under their feet and stood on both sides.The sergeant turned to salute the captain, and quickly stood behind him, and the captain moved a step away.Only the condemned man and the sergeant remained on the bridge now, standing at either end of a long plank spanning the three sleepers.The end of the civilian station was about to touch the fourth sleeper.At first the plank was balanced by the captain's weight, when the sergeant stood on it.At the signal from the captain, the sergeant moved quickly, the planks tipped, and the victim fell between the two sleepers.In the eyes of the prisoner, this was a neat and tidy way.With his face and eyes uncovered, he stared blankly at the "rickety footing" on which he stood, and after a while he shifted his gaze down to his feet, looking at the rushing, swirling water .Suddenly, he saw a tumbling log in the water, and his sight drifted down with it.How slowly the wood flows in the water!The river flows so hard!

He closed his eyes, trying to think of his wife and children one last time.Under the reflection of the rising sun, the river was dyed golden yellow. In the distance, the fog was rising on both sides of the river bank, the bunker, the soldiers, and the rotating log. Everything here made him unable to concentrate.At this moment, he felt a new kind of uneasiness in his heart.For it was a sharp, clear metallic clang that disrupted his thoughts of his loved ones.It was like a blacksmith's hammer striking the anvil, and it had the same high-pitched, intense tone that he could neither shut his ears off nor understand.He couldn't guess what the sound was, whether it was far away in the sky or close in front of his eyes, but it seemed to be both far and near.Its recurrence is regular, yet slow like a death knell.He waited impatiently for the next tap, and an inexplicable fear rushed over him.As the interval between strikes lengthens, the sound becomes intense and sharp.He felt as if his eardrum had been stabbed with a sharp knife, which disturbed him.He was afraid he would scream.All he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He opened his eyes and looked at the river below his feet again. "If I could get my hands free," he thought, "I could throw off the noose and jump in the river. I'd be able to dive from the bullets and swim all I could to the other bank, into the woods, and run home. God forbid, Now my home has not been occupied by them, and my wife and children are still far away from the occupying forces." These written thoughts do not seem to come from the mind of the dying person, but seem to flash in from the outside.At this moment, the captain nodded to the sergeant, and the sergeant took a step back.

Betton Farqua came from a long and respected Alabama family.As a wealthy plantation owner, he was as enthusiastic about politics as other plantation owners.Nature also originally advocated that the South should secede from the Union, and strongly supported the cause of the South.Because of his haughty character (to say no more here), he failed to join the brave army which had fought to the death in various brutal campaigns which ended in the fall of the town of Corinth.He was extremely depressed because his talent could not be used.He desperately hopes that one day his abilities will be able to be used, as useful as soldiers.He also aspires to stand out.He believes that this kind of opportunity will definitely come, and it is the same as equal opportunity in war.Moreover, he went all out, as long as it was beneficial to the south, he was willing to do any lowly thing.As long as it matches his character as a civilian who is really a soldier in his heart, no matter how dangerous it is, he is willing to take it.He was a firm believer in the blunt maxim that both love and war will meet any means.

Farqua and his wife were sitting on a homemade bench one evening when a soldier in a gray uniform rode up to the door, begging for some water.Mrs. Farqua was more than happy to serve the soldiers with her white hands.As she went to fetch water, her husband approached the dusty rider, eagerly asking him for news from the front. "The Yankees are busy repairing the railroad," said the soldier, "for another attack. They've reached the Eagle Creek bridge, repaired it, and erected a fence on the north bank of the river. Their The commander also ordered that anyone who tries to sabotage the railways, railway bridges, tunnels, and trains will be hanged on the spot if captured. I have seen these notices with my own eyes, and they are posted everywhere."

"How far is Eagle Creek Bridge from this place?" Farqua asked. "About thirty miles." "Are there any troops on the river bank?" "There's a sentry on this side of the bridge, and there's only one on the railway line half a mile from here." "If a man, a commoner, a man well acquainted with hanging, could escape that sentry, and outwit that sentry," laughed Farqua, "what could he do?" The soldier thought for a while and replied: "When I was there a month ago, I noticed that the flood of last winter accumulated a lot of logs floating in the river under the pier at this end. Now those logs are as dry as hemp rope , as long as there is a little spark, it will burn."

Mrs. Farqua fetched water.The soldier drank it down, thanked her politely, bowed to her husband, and rode off at a gallop.An hour later, as night fell, the horseman passed the plantation again, this time heading north, in the direction from which he had come.It turned out that he was a spy of the Northern Union Army. Beton Farqua was unconscious, as if dead, when he fell vertically from the bridge.It took a long time before he was awakened from unconsciousness by a sharp pain in his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation.Bursts of pain started from his neck and extended to his limbs and every cell in his body.The pain seemed to follow a delicate network and spread to the whole body like lightning; the pain was like tongues of fire, making him feel unbearably hot.He just felt his head swell, as if it was stuffed with something.None of these feelings had anything to do with thinking, because his thinking function had been destroyed.The only thing that survives is the feeling, but this feeling is extremely painful.He seemed to feel that everything was spinning, and he was like a burning core, surrounded by shining clouds.He is also like a huge pendulum, constantly swinging around a huge arc.For a moment, the bright light around him rushed over, followed by the sound of water splashing in his eardrums, and everything became cold and dark again.The function of thinking is restored.He knew that he had fallen into the river because the rope broke.At this time, he felt that he could breathe easily, and the noose around his neck had long strangled him, and now it happened to block the river water from pouring into his lungs.The idea of ​​being hanged at the bottom of a river seemed to him absurd.In the darkness, he opened his eyes and saw a beam of light above his head, but this beam of light was so far away that he couldn't touch it.He was still sinking because he saw the light above his head fading until it became a gleam.Then the gleam brightened and he knew he was rising because he felt better, but he couldn't believe it. "It's all right to be hanged and drowned," he thought, "but to be shot is not what I want. No! I don't want to be shot. It's not fair."

He didn't know what he was doing, but the sharp pain in his wrist told him that he was trying to free his hands.Like an idler watching a juggler's performance with indifference to the outcome, he watched himself struggle.The effort is amazing!What a marvel, what an astonishing power!awesome!Ah, he succeeded!The rope slackened, and the arms spread apart and floated upward.The hands were clearly visible in the growing light.He watched with a new interest, and with one hand, then the other, he grasped hard at the rope around his neck, then flung it aside hard again.The rope bobs up and down in the water like a water snake. "Take the rope on, put it back on!" he felt himself yelling into his hands as the rope came undone with a pain he had never felt before.His neck was in excruciating pain, his head seemed to be on fire, and the heart that had been beating lightly jumped suddenly, as if it was going to pop out of his mouth.He was aching all over, as if falling apart.However, the two disobedient hands did not obey his orders.They paddled fast and hard downward and he swam out of the water.He felt that his head was exposed first, the sun pierced him so that he couldn't see anything, his chest heaved sharply, and accompanied by a sharp and unbearable pain, a big mouthful of air was sucked in. However, after a while, he screamed again and spat it out! At this moment, he has completely controlled his various senses.In fact, these senses are still very sharp.He was in the midst of a frightful disorder, and he did not know what had heightened and improved his senses, making him aware of many things which he had never been aware of before.He felt the waves on his face and heard the splashing of them.He looked at the woods on the bank of the river, saw the trees, saw the leaves and the veins in each leaf, saw the little bugs on the leaves, locusts, golden flies, and brown spiders in the branches. , they are busy weaving webs.On thousands of blades of grass, colorful dewdrops twinkle and twinkle.On the water waves, midges were singing and dancing, dragonflies were flapping their wings, and water spiders were paddling their legs, as if oars were pushing a boat, all of which combined into a clear music.A fish swam past under his eyelids, and he heard the "rustle" sound of the fish's body. At this moment, he had already emerged from the water, his face facing downstream.After a while, the visible world seemed to slowly revolve around him, and he himself became the axis.He saw the small bridge, the blockhouse, the soldiers standing on the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two sentries, his firing squad.Their silhouettes are clearly visible against the blue sky.They shouted at him and pointed fingers at him.The captain had drawn his pistol, but he hadn't fired, and the others were unarmed.Their movements are grotesque and terrifying, and their figures are surprisingly large. Suddenly, he heard a gunshot and something exploded in the water inches from his head, splashing water all over his face.Immediately afterwards, there was another sound, and he saw one of the sentries holding a gun, and a wisp of blue smoke came out of the barrel.In the water, he saw the man on the bridge staring at him.He saw that it was a gray eye. He remembered reading in a book that gray eyes were the most powerful, and that all famous archers had a pair of gray eyes.The gray eye missed the mark, though. A swirling wave pushed Farqua around half a circle, and he looked again at the woods opposite the bunker.A loud and sharp voice, shouting monotonously and regularly behind him, crossed the surface of the water with exceptional clarity, passing through and drowning out all the surrounding sounds, including the sound of running water in his ear.Although Farqua was not a soldier, he often went in and out of the barracks, and he knew the terrible meaning of this calm, unhurried, guttural accent.The lieutenant on shore no longer stood by.How cruel and ruthless his voice was!The steady tone seemed to force the soldiers to remain calm.He yelled out these cruel words in a rigid manner: "All!...Attention!...Guns up!...Ready!...Aim!...Let go!" Farqua dived down, down as hard as he could.The river roared in his ears, like the roar of Niagara Falls, but he still heard the dull roar of the volley.He came up to the surface again, and saw many small shiny iron filings, flat and flat, sinking down bit by bit.A few hit his face and hands, then fell again, and sank.There was a piece caught in his collar, hot and unbearable, and he threw it out violently. When he emerged from the water and gasped for air, he realized that he had been underwater for a long time.He found himself far downstream.Compared with the place just now, it is much safer here.Most of the soldiers had already loaded their guns, and the cleaning rods pulled out of the barrels glistened in the sun, flipped in the air, and were inserted into the sheath again with a whoosh.The two sentries fired again, this time not following orders, but also missing. All this makes the hunted see it when he looks back.Now he was swimming hard with the current.His mind was as powerful as his limbs, and he was thinking at lightning speed. He thought, "This officer won't make the same mistake again. A salvo is as easy to dodge as a burst. Maybe he's ordered the soldiers to shoot at will now. God, I can't dodge so many bullets!" " Within two yards of him, there was a sudden, terrible splash of water, followed by a shriek, which slowly died away.The noise sounded as if it was flying back to the bunker again from the air, and finally there was an explosion with a "boom", disrupting the tranquility at the bottom of the river.The river water covered his head like a lifted quilt, enveloping him completely.He couldn't see anything, and he couldn't breathe.Cannon also got involved.He shook his head, shaking the water off his face, and heard a missed shell whizzing past him.After a while, there was a "cracking" sound of branches breaking in the woods in the distance. "They won't shoot like this again," he thought, "and next time they'll shoot grapeshot. I'll have to keep an eye on this muzzle, and the smoke will tell me that the cannon comes too late and always falls behind. Behind the shells. It's a nice gun." Suddenly, he felt that he was spinning rapidly, like a spinning top.The river, the bank, the woods, the bridge, the bunker, and the soldiers in the distance at this moment were all in a mess, and it was impossible to see clearly.Everything around him was colorful, and he saw only stripes of light swirling on the horizon.It turned out that he was caught in a vortex just now, and the vortex spiraled forward violently, making him dizzy.After a while, he was thrown by the current on a pile of rubble, which was the right and south bank of the river.He happened to be concealed by a raised area from the enemy.The sudden pause, combined with a hand scraped by gravel, gave him a chance to breathe.He shed tears excitedly, inserted his fingers into the sand, sprinkled it on his body one by one, and thanked it gently in his mouth.The sand looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds, everything beautiful in the world that he could imagine.The trees on the river bank were like the plants in the big garden, he noticed that they were neatly arranged, and he took a deep breath of the flowers on the trees.A strange rosy light flickered through the gaps in the tree trunks.On the branches, the breeze blew a pleasant sound, as if an organ was playing.He didn't want to escape anymore, he just wanted to stay in this charming place, even if he was arrested again, he would have no regrets. Among the branches above his head, grapeshots were whizzing and rattling, waking him up from his dream.Those stupid gunners fired a random shot, which was regarded as a farewell.He jumped up, rushed up the slope, and plunged into the woods. He walked all day, relying only on the movement of the sun for direction.The woods seemed endless and continuous, not even a woodcutter's path could be seen.He didn't know that the place where he lived was so barren.The sight in front of me was a bit mysterious. As night fell, he was tired and hungry, and his feet ached.However, when he thought of his wife and children at home, he walked forward again.Finally, he found a way.He knew he would be able to walk home along this road.The road was wide and straight, like a street in a city, but it looked as if no one had ever walked it.There is no farmland on either side of the road, and there is no human habitation around, not even the barking of dogs that reminds people that this place is still inhabited.The black trunks formed a straight wall, erected on both sides of the road, slowly extending to the horizon, meeting at a point, like a pattern drawn in perspective class.He looked up and saw the twinkling stars through the cracks in the trees.The stars looked strange and oddly grouped together.He was sure that there must be something mysterious and sinister about their combination.The woods on either side of the road were filled with eerie noises, and among them, again and again, he distinctly heard whispers in a strange language. The neck hurt so much, he touched it with his hand, only to realize that the neck was swollen badly.He knew the noose had frayed his neck and left a ring of purple marks.His eyes felt bloodshot and he could no longer close them.He was so thirsty that his tongue was swollen, and he stuck it out between his teeth, trying to cool himself off with the cool wind.How soft the lawn is on this deserted avenue!At this moment, he can no longer feel any road under his feet! There is no doubt that, despite the pain in his body, he fell asleep as he walked.Perhaps he had just woken from a bout of delirium, for he was seeing something else now.At this time he was standing in front of his house.The scene in front of him was still the same as when he left home. Under the morning light, it looked bright and beautiful.He must have been walking all night.He pushed open the door and walked up the spacious white corridor, only to see a woman's skirt coming towards him, his wife was radiant, demure and sweet, and she was coming down from the front porch to meet him.She waited at the foot of the steps, smiling, with incomparable grace and dignity.Ah, how beautiful she is!He opened his arms and ran forward.When he was about to hug her, he only felt a heavy blow on the base of his neck.A dazzling white light shone around him, followed by a loud noise, like the roar of a cannon, and suddenly, everything fell silent again, disappearing into the night! Berton Farqua passed away.His body, with the broken neck, floated slowly to and fro under the sleepers of the Eagle Creek Bridge.