II
Scene of the story is the prairie desert of the West in time of drouth. A party of men, including two who are not yet through their work in an eastern college, are riding in search of water, having had none for two days. Water is found, but shortly afterwards one of the two young men is missing. The talk of the others reveals the absent one's unselfishness and friendly devotion to his chum. Soon he is seen riding up excitedly and beckoning. The others follow him to a rough eminence, where he stops and listens, imploring them to tell him whether they can hear a voice calling. When they hear it too, he is assured that he has not lost his reason from the thirst, and together they begin a search which results in their discerning a cavern in the side of an embankment where a man lies on a couch moaning for water. As they try to enter, he warns them away with the cry of "smallpox."
The story is told to a group of friends gathered together of an evening, and the narrator draws from among his books a copy of Shakespeare found in the cavern by one of the men, bearing on its fly leaf, in addition to the owner's name, the word Brasenose, the name of one of the colleges at Oxford. The pathos of the story is in this last touch, an Oxford student dying so loathsome a death in a strange and desert land, and dying so heroically.
Divisions of the story. 1. Visualization of the desert and the men. The scent of water. Drinking from the muddied stream.
2. One of the young men starts off alone in a delirium of pain (m3). He returns suffering from the fear that he has lost his reason (m3).
3. The discovery of the cave (V3 and F2b). The delirious talk of the sick man. His sudden joy in the unexpected presence of human beings (V3 and m3). His final "G'way! G'way! Smallpox!"
4. The narrator of the story shows the copy of Shakespeare and the inscription on the fly leaf.
The story in the original contains about three thousand words. It is important that the suffering of the men be developed at some length in a convincing fashion. It serves as a preparation for the more terrible suffering of the one man who moans for water as he tears the foul smallpox sores. This should be presented in as visualizing a way as possible and with as full showing of mood as may be. The conclusion in division 4 must be altogether different in tone from the preceding. Narrator and listeners are in a world of ease and comfort, and their interest in the story is an interest in something pathetically remote.