"Did you have a hard time getting here?" asked the Doctor.

"The worst passage I ever made," said Miranda. "The
weather--Well there. What's the use? I'm here anyway."

"Tell me," said the Doctor as though he had been impatiently
waiting to say something for a long time: "what did Long Arrow
say when you gave him my message?"

The Purple Bird-of-Paradise hung her head.

"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