So long." Jack stood on a little jutting pinnacle of rock and watched them out of sight.

He thought the great crater behind the station looked like a crude, unfinished cup of clay and rocks; and that Crystal Lake, reflecting the craggy slope from the deeps below, was like blueing in the bottom of the cup.

He picked up a rock the size of his fist and drew back his arm for the throw, remembered what the supervisor had told him about throwing stones into the lake, and dropped the rock guiltily.

It was queer how a fellow wanted to roll a rock down and shatter that unearthly blue mirror into a million ripples.
He looked away to the northwest, where Mount Lassen sent a lazy column of thin, grayish vapor trailing high into the air, and thought how little he had expected to see this much-talked-of volcano; how completely and irrevocably the past two days had changed his life.
Why, this was only Tuesday! Day before yesterday he had been whooping along the beach at Venice, wading out and diving under the breakers just as they combed for the booming lunge against the sand cluttered with humanity at play.

He had blandly expected to go on playing there whenever the mood and the bunch invited.