She was painting a picture. The circumstances under which she worked were strange, almost beyond belief. When Johnny had suggested an underseas picture, she had been truly thrilled. But she had shuddered and said, “No!—I’d never dare do that!”
But—given one glimpse of the setting for such a picture, she had become greatly excited. “Such colors! Such contrasts! Yes—I surely must paint it!” she had exclaimed.
The task now was well begun. She was wearing tennis shoes and standing on sand. Before her a great anchor, red with rust, leaned against a huge boulder. Beside the anchor was a copper-bound chest. One might easily have imagined that this chest contained Spanish treasure—gold, diamonds, rubies. But it was empty, as Doris already had discovered.
The gray rock that supported the anchor was festooned with vegetation of rare hues—red, orange, pink, yellow, and deep dark blue, mingled in profusion. In and out among these plants darted small creatures which might almost have been birds. The girl was wearing a great brass helmet which hid her face. She was looking through glass, at a world unbelievably strange and beautiful.
Above her, its shadow looming darkly, lay the Sea Nymph. Descending from the boat was a long tube that supplied her with air. A constant trickle of bubbles escaped from beneath her helmet. Her easel was weighted down, and her canvas specially treated to resist water. Her brushes and colors were the same she had used on the sunny, tropical shores.
But the scene! How she thrilled to it! And she was painting it as truly and exactly as she could. Perhaps thousands who never had been beneath the surface of the water would look at this picture and wonder at its coloring.
Thrilled at the thought, she painted more industriously than ever, forgetting entirely the blue shadow. She had searched long for a spot that would make the most interesting picture. She had wandered, fascinated, until she had chanced upon this anchor and strong box, lost so long before.
It was indeed wonderful. With a background of ivory and pink coral, purple plumes of seaweed, fringes of lace-like anemone, in a framework of water-washed rocks—it made a scene not soon to be forgotten.
So here she was, painting rapidly—though far back in her mind was the memory of that blue shadow behind the rock....
The scene was forever changing. A cloud passing over the sun, dimmed the colors. Then a large school of small fish, darting forward at a furious rate, completely shut off her view.
But now! “Ah, now!” she thought, joyously.
A dozen tropical fish, the brightest and best she ever had seen, came to play about the ancient chest and “pose” for their pictures. With quick, deft touches she painted them in—two, staring large-eyed at the anchor—three, peering into the ancient chest, and three just “resting”.
But what was this?
Like a flock of birds that have caught sight of a circling hawk, the tropical fish darted swiftly away. Had they caught a glimpse of a dangerous foe, gliding from behind the rock? The girl thought so, and shuddered. She even fancied she had caught its color again—dark blue. But of this she could not be sure. Down here all was so strange.
“A villain,” she murmured to herself with a low laugh. “The final touch to a gorgeous setting.”
To quiet her shaky nerves she gave herself more intensively to completion of her task.
“There is no danger,” she assured herself again. “Grandfather says there is absolutely none—and he has spent days on end on the ocean’s floor.”
She recalled his very words: “Oh, yes, there are sharks in these waters—but they won’t harm you. If they should get curious and come too close—poke them with your stick! I’ve done that more than once.”
Scarcely had she gone over these reassuring words when something startled her, anew. A dark shadow appeared suddenly at her right. She took one look, then laughed. “It’s only a fish,” she thought.
Brushing away two tiny fish that had managed to get themselves stuck to her canvas, she began giving her work its final touches.
For ten full minutes she worked feverishly. “My time is almost up,” she was thinking. “They will be giving me the signal. Then up I’ll go. But I do so want—”
Her thoughts were suddenly arrested. What was that? She had felt the motion of water against her body. “As if something passed—fast!” she thought with a little shudder. Turning slowly about, she peered through the window of her brass helmet.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Nothing but three long, gray fish, over there. But what of that? I—I’ll give my signal rope a pull,” she told herself. “Just a minute more and I’ll do it.”
The minute stretched to two, three, four. And then it happened. One of the long, gray fish flashed like a streak of doom, straight for the hand that held the paint brush. Missing by inches, it collided with the easel, knocked it to the sea floor and shot away in sudden flight.
The fish could not have been more frightened than the girl. Suddenly she recalled wild tales told by the natives about the vicious barracuda—“Tiger of the Sea.” ... A woman had dabbled a finger in the water—and one of these fish snapped it off.... Swimmers had lost toes.... She felt paralyzed with fear.
Then, like an act in some strange drama, a pair of dangling legs appeared between her and the gray terrors. The legs were followed swiftly by a body, a brass helmeted head and two hands, holding a sharp-pointed spear.
The spear shot out!
The gray terrors, like arrows from a bow, flashed out of sight. It seemed to Doris that no creatures ever had moved so rapidly beneath the surface of the sea.
She watched the “apparition” in a helmet—which she knew to be Johnny—take up her easel and set it in position. She noted, vaguely, that the picture had landed right side up and was not harmed. Then Johnny turned and held out his hand.
She expected to be taken straight up to the ship’s deck. Instead, he led her a distance of a hundred feet along the bottom. Then they came to an abrupt halt, and Johnny pointed straight down.
She looked—and involuntarily stepped back. They were standing on the very brink of a yawning, watery precipice. Far down as one could see was only blue-black depth. It was an awe-inspiring sight.
As if to add to her amazement, she saw—perhaps a hundred feet down—some large, dark hulk. It was dim and indistinct as a shadow, yet very real, as it moved slowly along the cliff, to disappear in the blue-black of the apparently bottomless ocean.
This had not been part of the planned show, she knew at once from her guide’s actions. He moved his arm, pointing excitedly.
A moment longer they stood there, looking down. Then came the signal to come up. The picture and paints were attached to the easel, and a cord drew them up. All Doris had to do was to give a little spring, and up, up, she rose, to the glorious sunshine of a tropical day.
A quarter of an hour later, she and Johnny were seated on the deck, laughing at one another and scarcely knowing why.
Dave and the professor had gone ashore to study tropical bird life, so after the evening meal, Johnny and Doris sat on deck watching the play of phosphorescent creatures beneath the surface of the sea.
“This,” said Johnny, “is my day off. Tonight I sleep. Tomorrow old Samatan and I are going for a sail in a large dugout, to visit some coral reefs.”
Doris smoothed back her thick, golden hair, fixed her bright blue eyes on him, and said: “Why?”
“We need him for a friend,” Johnny replied, quietly. “If he is with us—all the native crew will be, too. He’s a leader.”
“You talk,” said Doris, “as if there were to be war!”
“Who knows?” Johnny did not laugh. “Perhaps there will be, but not just yet. There are spies with us now!”
“How do you know?” She leaned forward in her chair.
“That man I caught on board the other night, was a spy. Look!” He held up the exquisitely wrought knife. “Do you think a native would have such a gem of a knife? Not a chance!
“Then—there’s the green arrow to prove he’s a spy!” Johnny went on. “One of the messages I spelled out by using their code read: ‘Board them. Discover all you can.’”
“But why?” said Doris. “We’re not secret agents.”
“That’s what they don’t know! We are Americans—and they don’t want us around.”
“Know what?” Johnny continued, “I believe that big thing that glides through the water—the thing we saw today—is a submarine!”
“It can’t be!”
“Why not?”
“Well, if it is—it must be an American submarine!”
Johnny looked at her for a moment in silence.
“It’s not an American submarine,” he said, after a time. “I’ve seen them, and this one’s the wrong shape. It’s some spy submarine, looking over the bottom of the sea and getting information for the next war. I shouldn’t be surprised if a large part of that war were fought right in this Caribbean Sea!
“What’s more,”—he rose to his feet—“I’ll bet a dollar that the thing that took Samatan and me for a ride in the steel ball, was that same submarine!”
“Trouble with you,” Doris laughed merrily, “is too much imagination.”
“You just wait and see,” Johnny replied with a smile.
The sound of oars at this moment, announced the return of Dave and the professor from their day’s explorations.
Next morning Johnny and old Samatan sailed away toward the smiling face of the rising sun.
“This is a grand dugout you’ve got!” Johnny enthused.
Smiling, Samatan pulled a line, giving the boat full sail. She tilted sharply. Boy and man settled back against the pull of the sail and sped along before the wind.
Johnny’s eyes took in the whole of the trim little craft, and he smiled, contentedly.
It was indeed a great little dugout. Not so small, either. Fully twenty feet long and six feet wide, it had been hewn from a solid mahogany log. The boy tried to estimate the number of days of hard, careful work that would have required, but gave it up.
The inside surface was polished to the last degree, and the seats were braided, cocoanut fibre. On the prow, carved in the most perfect manner, was the wooden image of a seagull.
All unknown to Johnny, Samatan was keeping an eye on him. His keen old mind read the boy’s thought like a book. One lover of a sailboat recognizes another, and since his tenth birthday, Johnny had been an ardent sailboat enthusiast. At that age he had rigged up a square sail for a rowboat and had known many happy hours on the water. The fact that he had once capsized and barely escaped drowning, had not in the least dampened his ardor.
“We go coral reef. Catchem turtles for stew,” Samatan said at last.
“How do you catch them?” Johnny asked.
“Samatan show you.”
After that there was silence.
It became evident that Samatan was an expert with a sail. The breeze picked up and the sea became choppy, but the smiling old man, eyes squinting, lay back at ease. Pulling first at one rope, then another, he held the small craft on her course.
Johnny laughed right out loud when at last the old man took off his soft, loose shoes, gripped the ropes with his toes and began steering with his feet.
Two delightful hours passed. Then the dugout slid up on a sandy shore.
When the boat had been pulled up, Samatan’s eyes scanned the sandy beach. Suddenly he went racing away and, with the silence and speed of a great cat, stole up on an unsuspecting turtle, basking in the sand. A quick leap—and the turtle lay on its back, a prisoner.
“Food,” said the old man. “Much food from the sea. But,” he added quietly, “we take only what we need.”
When all the turtles needed had been stowed away in the boat, they went for a walk on the beach. They made a strange picture, this bright-faced American boy and the old, brown native whose face was wrinkled by many tropical suns.
Seldom had Johnny spent a more interesting or exciting morning. They hung a heavy cord over a rocky ledge to snare a sea-crab, turned over a Hawk’s-bill turtle, whose shell was worth eight dollars a pound, and chased a monkey up a cocoanut tree.
They had wandered for two hours and were far from the boat when, for no apparent reason, Samatan uttered a low exclamation. Then he faced squarely toward the ridge, which at this place rose some twenty feet above the beach.
“Huh!” he grunted. “We see!”
He dashed away at surprising speed, up the hill. Tripping over vines and blundering into a bramble bush, Johnny followed.
When at last he caught up with the agile old man, Samatan was standing motionless, looking off at the sea. For a full minute, lips parted, eyes staring, they stood there in silence.
For—stealing up on them like an enemy in the night, a terrific storm was racing in from the sea. It took but one word from Samatan’s lips to complete the terror of the prospect.
“Hurricane!” he said, gutterally.
“We must run for the boat!” Johnny sprang down from the rock.
“Not go now. Too late!” Samatan did not move. Instead, he stood looking along the ridge, first this way, then that.
“The Sea Nymph!” Johnny broke out again. “She will be lost!”
“Not get lost,” Samatan said, slowly. “Good crew. Harbor not far.” Once again his eyes swept the ridge.
“Come,” he said at last. “This way. We go fast.” Even as he spoke, a gust of wind sweeping in from the sea, all but threw the boy off his rocky perch.
For ten minutes or more the two of them fought their way along the ridge. At last the native paused. “Here,” he said, “is most high. Trees. Must climb these—quick! Waves go all over coral reef!”
“Al—all right.” The rising gale blew Johnny’s words down his throat. Seizing the low branches of a large tree, he prepared to climb.
“No! That bad tree! No good!” said Samatan. “This one.”
Into Johnny’s mind at that moment came the words of the professor: “When I am in a strange land I do what a native will do—go where he goes. If he says ‘No go’—I stay.”
So, without further questioning, the boy began to climb Samatan’s tree.
The tree was short and sturdy. Soon they were perched like crows on two limbs close together. And in silence they watched the onrushing storm. The sky was black. It was like night. Scarcely could the boy see his companion. Trembling with excitement, he decided to force his thoughts from the impending hurricane.
“Samatan,” he said, “there was something about our steel ball you did not like.”
“Yes,” came the instant reply. “Professor—he is good man. Very good. But one thing must not do. He must not!”
“He is going to tell me,” Johnny thought, with quickening pulse.
But at that moment there came such a roar as would drown the strongest voice, and onto the beach came the rush of a great sea. Something like a tidal wave had struck the narrow reef.
“I must hang on,” the boy thought. The next instant he was engulfed in stinging salt water. The sea had swept over the land.
Though Johnny felt that he was being swallowed by the sea, it was in reality only the froth and foam of the monster wave that reached him. One instant he was gasping for breath, the next, he was looking down on a madly whirling world.
The thought that struck him first, with the force of a blow, was—“the tree I meant to climb is gone! Swept away by the sea!”
It was true. The tree, rotten at the roots, had vanished. Samatan had saved his life, and a new sense of respect for the aged native swept over Johnny. With it came the conviction that whatever it was the old native wanted from the professor, it must be right for him to have it. And something seemed to assure Johnny that he would hear the story without asking.
But at that moment, to talk at all was impossible. The shrieking of the wind, the cracking of branches, the roar of thunder and the mad tumult of the sea, were completely deafening. Johnny wondered how long it would last? Would greater waves come? Would he and Samatan at last be swept into the sea? To all these questions he found no answer.
In an effort to forget the terror of the situation he made himself think once more of the great steel ball and his adventures beneath the sea....
In the meantime his companions on the Sea Nymph were witnessing a feat such as even the gray-haired captain never had seen equaled. Watching the storm, yet fearing for the safety of Johnny and Samatan and hoping against hope that they might return, they on the yacht had delayed lifting anchor.
When at last they headed toward the narrow entrance of a natural harbor, the wind tore their sails to ribbons, while waves, mountain-high, swept them toward a rocky wall.
In despair, the captain trusted the fate of his ship to the native crew. Nor did he trust in vain. With a few yards of sail at their command the natives, in the midst of dashing spray, clung to spar and masthead, turning the graceful craft this way and that. Then—at precisely the right instant—they seemed to lift her from the sea and send her shooting through a channel so narrow it seemed the paint would be scraped from her two sides at once. They sent her gliding smoothly to safety, in a harbor as calm as a millpond.
“Bravo!” shouted the captain.
“Glorious!” the professor cried. “Never saw such sailing! Those men deserve all praise!”
Six long hours the storm roared on, and for six endless hours Johnny clung to his tree. Though the sea, like some menacing monster, appeared to thrust out long, white arms to grasp him, he remained safely with Samatan, in the tree top. At last, sweeping high overhead, the storm-clouds raced away—to leave a kindly, golden moon looking down on the boy and the old man.
“Come,” said Samatan, climbing gingerly down from his perch. “We go back.”
“Back to what?” Johnny’s lips framed the words he dared not speak.
Their trail back over the moonlit beach was strange beyond belief. They climbed over a huge old palm tree, lying on the ground, stumbled on a giant, loggerhead turtle, killed in the storm, and slipped on jellyfish left high on the ridge.
As they rounded a bend in the beach, a large object loomed before them, white and ghostly in the night.
“Boat,” said Samatan.
“Lifeboat,” the boy amended as they came closer.
Examining it closely he read the words: “S. S. Vulture”. Bashed in at the prow, the boat lay empty, upside down. What was its story? Had the Vulture been wrecked? Had part of her crew put to sea in this boat, only to perish?
With a shudder, Johnny pushed on behind his tireless guide.
“Our boat must be gone,” he ventured at last.
Samatan made no reply.
More fallen palms, tangled sea moss, jellyfish, a dead crocodile, a mile of sand, and then—Johnny rubbed his eyes. He opened them to look again.
“Our boat!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” Samatan said.
It was true. The boat was safe. Piled with seaweed and half-buried in sand, it remained where they had left it.
A brief examination redoubled the boy’s admiration for the aged native. The dugout had been chained to a stout, palm stump. Even the sail was lashed beneath the seat. Samatan had taken all these precautions before there was any sign of a storm. Wise old Samatan!
In awed silence Johnny helped to clear the sand and seaweed away.
“Now we go,” said Samatan, preparing to launch the boat.
If Johnny had admired Samatan’s sailing before, his admiration was doubled now. Up—up—up they glided, until they seemed ready to touch the stars, then down—down, far into the trough of a wave.
“Samatan.” Johnny spoke without thinking. “Why do you hate our steel ball?”
“Hate? Ball?” Samatan struggled for the right word. “Good man, professor. But must not steal natives’ gold!”
“Gold?” Johnny ejaculated. “I don’t understand.”
The tale the old man told, then, out there on the racing sea, was fantastic indeed. Yet Johnny doubted never a word of it....
The islands now belonging to Samatan’s native people once had been a French colony. The French had made slaves of the natives, and had brought in many more slaves. Then the slaves revolted and drove all the Frenchmen from the islands.
“After that—our land!” Samatan declared proudly. “Long time republic. Long time everybody happy. Then,” his voice dropped, “how you say it—came bad man. Very hard man. Very cruel. Make people work too hard. Want gold. All gold. By and by want kill that man, my people.
“This bad man see strange men come—many men.” Samatan continued. “They put gold in chest—much gold—and dump in sea.
“Now,” Samatan sighed, “bad man dead. Gold lost. Never find that gold, my people. Belong my people—that gold! Find gold—my people pay debts. Very happy. But now,” he frowned, “Professor, he hunt gold with steel ball. Wanna keep that gold, you think, that professor?”
“Oh, no! No!” Johnny laughed. “The professor is not looking for treasure! Only strange fishes, all sorts of odd creatures that live beneath the sea.”
“Not wanna find gold?” The old man was plainly puzzled.
“Oh, sure—I s’pose he’d like to find it,” Johnny laughed. “And—we’ll really try to—now that we know about it. But if we do find it, you may be sure it will all be for your people—to the last doubloon!”
“Good boy, Johnny.” The old man smiled broadly. “Good man, Professor. All good. Everybody!”
“I see a light,” said Johnny. “That must be Kennedy’s place.”
“Right, Kennedy.” said Samatan. “By and by we come that place.”
“That,” said Johnny, “will be swell!” Then his brow wrinkled. Where, he wondered, was the Sea Nymph? Did it make harbor safely? He sighed as he reflected that soon he would know the answer—for better or worse!
While Johnny was going through his wild adventure, Doris and Dave were not without their own exciting moments. Of course while the storm lasted, the professor’s party remained inside the Sea Nymph’s cabin. As soon as it abated they immediately went ashore.
Troubled as they were at thought of Johnny’s possible fate, there was for the moment nothing they could do. The seas were still running high. Dave and the professor went for a tramp in the jungle, while Doris followed the trail to the Kennedy home.
Mildred appeared greatly worried when told of the journey Johnny and Samatan had undertaken.
“But why did Johnny go?” she asked in surprise.
“Oh,” replied Doris, “he had a notion that Samatan was angry about something. He said we might need the help of Samatan and his men.”
“How?” Mildred asked.
“That’s it—how?” Doris laughed uneasily. “He thinks there are many European spies around here!”
“Well—there are!” Mildred nodded her head vigorously.
“You, too?” exclaimed Doris. “But anyhow, Johnny thinks the spies believe we are looking for them—and that they’d do something terrible to us.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mildred.
“How comforting you are!” Doris smiled ruefully. “Just when I want to feel quiet in my mind! You aren’t helping a bit!”
“Well,” said Mildred, “how can I? There were those men singing in some foreign tongue. They just vanished! And there’s that mysterious, blinking green arrow.”
“Two of them,” Doris corrected. “One on land and one on sea—like Paul Revere!” she chuckled mischievously.
“But of course,” she added more seriously, “there was the man who came on board our boat, sneaking around, and went into a huddle with the octopus! That would have been funny had it not been so terrible. He had a knife that Johnny says no native would carry. But I don’t see—”
“There are a lot of things we don’t see!” Mildred broke in. “For instance—who was that whisperer who was always breaking in when Dave and Johnny in the steel ball were being dragged against the rocks?”
“He might have been a thousand miles away. Radio’s like that,” Doris said, doubtfully.
“Yes-and he might not!” Mildred exclaimed. “He appeared to know too much for that.”
“One more thing,” Doris laughed. “Johnny thinks there is a submarine—a foreign one—in these waters!—He thinks we saw it, and that it was the thing that dragged the steel ball, that day!”
“I shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Mildred.
“Oh, bother your ‘shouldn’t wonder’!” exclaimed Doris, good naturedly. “Come on, let’s take a walk. It will be good for our nerves!
“But I’ll tell you one thing,” she added as they started off. “If I believed half the things you do—I’d be getting out of here!”
“It’s not so easy,” Mildred replied, soberly. “Grandfather is a dear. It would be a shame to leave him alone. Of course he says he’s going to send me back to college in the fall, and I suppose I shall go. College means so much these days.”
“Yes,” Doris agreed, “I’m sure it does.”
“But he can’t do that unless we get our motorboat up from the bottom,” said Mildred. “And even after that—there are the spies.”
“Spies! Always spies!” Doris laughed. “Let’s forget them!”
“O.K. Let’s do,” the other girl agreed.
The trail they had chosen led to the beach where the mysterious male chorus had disappeared. Arrived at the beach where the waves were now racing, they stood for a time in silence. When a piece of driftwood—the broken side of a native dugout—came floating in, Mildred turned away with a shudder, her thoughts on Johnny.
Having wandered into the jungle a short distance she stopped suddenly to stare at the trunk of a tree. There, standing out against the smooth gray bark, was a small, green arrow!
“Doris!” she called. “Come here!”
“Green arrow!” Doris exclaimed, reaching Mildred’s side. “What do you suppose it means?” she whispered.
“It’s a trail marker!” said Mildred. “There should be others. Come on!”
There were others! Some were quite far up on the trees, while others were low. They continued the search for ten minutes, steadily finding others.
Doris was frightened and did not wish to go on. At every turn of the trail she expected to come upon a freshly made clearing, a cluster of tents and a whole army of strange warriors.
But Mildred thought of but one thing.... Perhaps they were on the road to a real discovery.
As they went deeper and deeper into the jungle, the green arrows became scarcer, and harder to find. The trail grew steeper and narrower. Thorny bushes tore at them, and once a great snake crossed their path. Unused to all this, Doris was distinctly uneasy. But Mildred’s face fairly shone.
However, when they came to a place where the trail split into three narrower ones and, search as they might, they could not find a single arrow, Mildred, too, was ready to give up.
“Come on,” said Doris. “It will soon be dark, and I must get back to the boat. They may want to put out, in search of Johnny and Samatan.”
“You’re right,” said Mildred. “We must be starting back. But—I’m coming back here again!”
“Alone?” Doris stared.
“Perhaps.”
The journey back to the Kennedy home was made in silence.
By the time the girls had eaten their evening meal it was completely dark. Wandering down to the beach they listened to the diminishing roar of the sea, and watched its strange blackness against the moon’s golden light.
“There’s a light!” Doris exclaimed.
“Yes, sir! And it blinks!” Mildred became excited.
After watching for a full minute, she suddenly threw her arms around her companion to exclaim: “Oh! Doris! That’s Johnny! It is—it surely is! Sometimes he blinks his light from the ship that way—one, two, three—one, two, three! Oh, it’s wonderful! Aren’t you glad?”
“Of course I’m glad,” said Doris. “But then—men always do manage to get back one way or another, don’t they?”
“Oh! Oh, no!” Mildred caught her words. “They don’t—nowhere near ‘always’.”
Just then Dave and the professor came down to the beach.
“We think it’s Johnny and Samatan,” Doris said quietly.
“Good!” said the professor. “That lifts a load from my shoulders!” He turned to speak to Mildred, but she had gone.
Ten minutes later, natives caught the dugout and hauled it far up on the sandy beach.
After receiving the congratulations of his shipmates, Johnny began flashing his light into the surrounding darkness, searching for Mildred. At last the beam came to rest on a charming picture—a girl with reddish-golden hair, wearing a dress of golden material, tied at the waist with a broad red sash. All this—against the greenish blackness of a jungle night.
“Why!” Johnny exclaimed, as he caught her hand. “The little beach-comber has turned into a golden fairy!”
“P—please, Johnny!” Mildred stuttered confusedly, “I—I just wanted to—celebrate your return from the d—dead!”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Johnny. “I always come back. But it was mighty nice of you, anyhow, and I won’t forget!”
* * * * * * * *
He was ready for a good, long sleep. His task of watching was given over for the night to Samatan’s son, who was a member of the native crew. So Johnny did not return to the boat, but was shown to the guest room of the Kennedy cottage where, under a mosquito-bar canopy, with the tropical moon shining through the bamboo lattice, he slept the sleep of the just.
By the next afternoon both he and Mildred were ready for further adventure. Together, they tramped into the jungle.
“If we find more green arrows,” said Mildred, fairly tingling with excitement, “where do you think the trail will lead us?”
“Hard to tell,” said Johnny. “It might take us right to the spot from which the green arrow of light shines out in the night.”
“And then?” she whispered.
“No can tell!” laughed Johnny. “We’ll answer that when the time comes.”
But would they? And what would the answer be?
After hours of searching they decided that, whatever the answer might be, the finding of it must be postponed for another day. Beyond the spot where the trail forked, they could not proceed.
“There’s something queer about these signs of the green arrow,” said Johnny, dropping onto a cushion of moss in the shade. “There is something we don’t know about it all.”
“Yes,” replied the girl, “and we’re going to find out what it is!”
“But not today,” said Johnny. “The shadows already are growing long.”
By the time they reached the beach from which the singing band had so mysteriously disappeared, the abrupt, tropical darkness had fallen. For a moment they stood looking at the dark, mysterious sea. Suddenly Mildred gripped Johnny’s arm and whispered:
“Look! The green arrow!”
True enough. Seeming but a stone’s throw from shore, the green arrow appeared to rise from the sea.
“It must be on a submarine!” Mildred whispered.
“Wait! They’re signalling.” Johnny dragged pencil and paper from his pocket and began scribbling numbers. This continued for two minutes. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the green arrow vanished.
“Gone!” the girl exclaimed.
“Come on,” said Johnny. “I want to see what they were saying.”
Leading the way to a dark hollow where their light could not be seen, he asked her to hold the electric torch while he deciphered the message.
“‘We will strike,’” he read aloud, “‘at the earliest possible moment!’
“That’s all.” He stood up. “Spies strike in the dark—and without warning. I wonder what we have ahead of us!”
That night as he tramped the deck on his silent watch, Johnny found his mind crowded with disturbing thoughts of the significant message the green arrow had flashed over the sea.
“We will strike—” his mind went over the words again and again, “at the earliest possible moment!” Where would they strike? And who was to receive the blow? His shipmates on the Sea Nymph? Old Kennedy and his daughter? Or someone he never had seen?
“I may never know,” he told himself. “Spies strike in the dark.”
Johnny had read that during the World War, spies had swum to the propellers of outgoing ships laden with men and supplies. Hours later, with the ship far out at sea, a bomb had exploded, blowing away the propeller and leaving the ship helpless. He knew, too, that spies had placed incendiary bombs in the holds of ships, and dumped quantities of acid in the very bottom of a vessel, to eat its way through the steel.
“Yes,” he thought, “and even now—in times of supposed peace—they are boring in!”
* * * * * * * *
The Sea Nymph left the river and put out to sea while Johnny slept. When he awoke in mid-afternoon, they were anchored in their old position.
“How would you like to make a solo journey in the steel ball?” Dave asked when he came on deck.
“Go—go down alone?” Johnny asked, feeling a bit strange. “That—oh, that’s O.K., I guess.”
“I was down this morning,” said Dave, “and my eyes are tired. There are some pictures I’d like to have. Conditions below are all right, and there’s an off-shore breeze. We’ve two lines out to windward, which should hold her steady.
“What the professor would like,” he went on in a businesslike tone, “is to have you go down, slowly, along that submerged cliff, stopping every ten feet to take a photo floodlight picture. That will give us a continued story of plant and animal life, down to perhaps two thousand feet.”
“Al—all right,” Johnny agreed. “I can do that.” But for the life of him he could not still his heart’s wild beating. He seemed to be hearing a voice say:
“We will strike—at the earliest possible moment!”
He forced his lips to repeat: “Two thousand feet, you say?”
“About that. Better get ready at once. The wind may pick up.”
“Yes, it may stri—pick up,” Johnny agreed a little absently.
Twenty minutes later, inside the steel ball and busy taking pictures of the wall as he stopped each ten feet, he had all but banished thoughts of the green arrow from his mind.
* * * * * * * *
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.