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
(_m_3_). He returns suffering from the fear that he has lost his
reason (_m_3_).
3. The discovery of the cave (_V_3_ and _F_2b_). The delirious
talk of the sick man. His sudden joy in the unexpected presence
of human beings (_V_3_ and _m_3_). 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.