But someone else really was seeing green arrows—and plenty of them. That was the granddaughter of old Mr. Kennedy—the man who for twenty years had defied encroachments of foreign interests in this happy little republic. For Mildred had gone on a hunting expedition all her own. She was hunting spies. She had started once more over the green arrow trail and, strangely enough, almost instantly had discovered the secret of its markings.
During their months together she and her grandfather had spent hours on end, tramping the jungle, and he had taught her to know all the usual signs. The trail of some great snake in the sand—the uprooted earth, where little wild pigs had been—the marks of a monkey’s claws on the green sprouts of a tree—all had a meaning for her.
Knowing these usual signs, she had looked for unusual ones—and had found them. On reaching the spot where they had lost the trail on two other occasions, she noted that the next to the last arrow was low down, while the last, was some ten feet higher. So—to reach this last marking place—someone had been obliged to climb! In doing this, bits of bark had been broken off, leaving fresh, light-brown spots on the tree trunks.
“Now I shall look for broken bark—not arrows,” she told herself.
She had not gone forward a hundred paces on the right hand fork of the trail, when she let out a cry of surprise and joy. Not only had she discovered broken bark, but up, perhaps thirty feet on a tree, she saw a green arrow.
“One, two, three,” she whispered. “Perhaps that’s the way it goes. One arrow down low, one a little higher, and a third, well up on the trunk!”
She discovered at once that this was just the way the markings ran. So immediately she took up the trail again.
The distance from the shore of the island to the summit of the tallest hill, was considerable. The trail, such as it was, made only by natives and wild animals, wound round and round—up and up.
The girl followed this trail for more than an hour. Then she sat down on a fallen mahogany tree to think. She was far from all her friends. Should she go farther? She, too, recalled the last message of the green arrow of light—about “striking”!
“Perhaps I can stop them,” she whispered stoutly, as she rose to her feet. “At least I can try!”