A man waits in the shadow of an active volcano while everyone around him evacuates.
This is an odd little story; it feels of a piece with The Delta at Sunset and The Giaconda of the Twilight Noon, with a man out of place and largely immobilized – this time by a desire to learn the fate of a mysterious “Springman” and by his fascination with a ritualistic dancer who is fending off the pending volcanic eruption, rather than by physical disability – watching a wondrous event unfold. The central mysteries are barely suggested, much less resolved, and the story ends rather abruptly when the man disappears and the woman he has been sharing a house with departs. Odd and evocative.