“That’s the worst part of it,” she said. “I might almost as well have not come at all. I wasn’t able to deliver your message. I couldn’t find him. Long Arrow, the son of Golden Arrow, has disappeared!”
“Disappeared!” cried the Doctor. “Why, what’s become of him?”
“Nobody knows,” Miranda answered. “He had often disappeared before, as I have told you—so that the Indians didn’t know where he was. But it’s a mighty hard thing to hide away from the birds. I had always been able to find some owl or martin who could tell me where he was—if I wanted to know. But not this time. That’s why I’m nearly a fortnight late in coming to you: I kept hunting and hunting, asking everywhere. I went over the whole length and breadth of South America. But there wasn’t a living thing could tell me where he was.”
There was a sad silence in the room after she had finished; the Doctor was frowning in a peculiar sort of way and Polynesia scratched her head.
“Did you ask the black parrots?” asked Polynesia. “They usually know everything.”
“Certainly I did,” said Miranda. “And I was so upset at not being able to find out anything, that I forgot all about observing the weather-signs before I started my flight here. I didn’t even bother to break my journey at the Azores, but cut right across, making for the Straits of Gibraltar—as though it were June or July. And of course I ran into a perfectly frightful storm in mid-Atlantic. I really thought I’d never come through it. Luckily I found a piece of a wrecked vessel floating in the sea after the storm had partly died down; and I roosted on it and took some sleep. If I hadn’t been able to take that rest I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.”
“Poor Miranda! What a time you must have had!” said the Doctor. “But tell me, were you able to find out whereabouts Long Arrow was last seen?”
“Yes. A young albatross told me he had seen him on Spidermonkey Island?”
“Spidermonkey Island? That’s somewhere off the coast of Brazil, isn’t it?”