Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel Part 19

"Men go git cinchona bark now. Plenty get for him," and he pointed to Mr. Damon. "They no like stay in village. T'ink yo' got lightning in yo' pocket," and he pointed to the electric rifle.

"Oh, I see!" laughed Tom. "They think I'm a sort of wizard. Well, so I am. Tell them if they don't get lots of quinine bark I'll have to stay here until all the mad dogs are shot."

The interpreter translated, and when the chief had ceased replying, Tom and the others were told:

"Plenty bark git. Plenty much. Yo' go away with yo' lightning. All right now."

"Well, it's a good thing I keeled over that dog," Tom said. "It was the best object lesson I could give them."

And from then on there was no more trouble in this district about getting a supply of the medicinal bark.

A week pa.s.sed and Professor b.u.mper was no nearer finding the lost city than he had been at first. Reluctantly, he returned to the tunnel camp to get more provisions.

"And then I'll start out again," he said.

"We'll go with you some other time," promised Tom. "But now I expect I'll have to get another blast ready."

He found the debris brought down by the second one all removed, and in a few days, preparations for exploding more of the powder were under way.

Many holes had been drilled in the face of the cliff of hard rock, and the charges tamped in. Electric wires connected them, and they were run out to the tunnel mouth where the switch was located.

This was done late one afternoon, and it was planned to set off the blast at the close of the working day, to allow all night for the fumes to be blown away by the current of air in the tunnel.

"Get the men out, Tim," said Tom, when all was ready.

"All right, sor," was the answer, and the Irish foreman went back toward the far end of the bore to tell the last shift of laborers to come out so the blast could be set off.

But in a little while Tim came running back with a queer look on his face.

"What's the matter?" asked Tom. "Why didn't you bring the men with you?"

"Because, sor, they're not there!"

"Not in the tunnel? Why, they were working there a little while ago, when I made the last connection!"

"I know they were, but they've disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

"Yis sir. There's no way out except at this end an' you didn't see thim come out: did you?"

"Then they've disappeared! That's all there is to it! Bad goin's on, thot's what it is, sor! Bad!" and Tim shook his head mournfully.

Chapter XV

Frightened Indians

"There must be some mistake," said Tom, wondering if the Irish foreman were given to joking. Yet he did not seem that kind of man.

"Mistake? How can there be a mistake, sor? I wint in there to tell th'

black imps t' come out, but they're not there to tell!"

"What's the trouble?" asked Job t.i.tus, coming out of the office near the tunnel mouth. "What's wrong, Tom?"

"Why, I sent Tim in to tell the men to come out, as I was going to set off a blast, but he says the men aren't in there. And I'm sure the last shift hasn't come out."

By this time Koku, Mr. Damon and Walter t.i.tus had come up to find out what the trouble was.

"The min have disappeared--that's all there is to it!" Tim said.

"Perhaps they have missed their way--the lights may have gone out, and they might have wandered into some abandoned cutting," suggested Tom.

"There aren't any abandoned cuttin's," declared Tim. "It's a straight bore, not a shaft of any kind. I've looked everywhere, and th' min aren't there I tell ye!"

"Are the lights going?" asked Job. "You might have missed them in the dark, Tim."

"The lights are going all right, Mr. t.i.tus," said the young man in charge of the electrical arrangements. "The dynamo hasn't been stopped to-day."

"Come on, we'll have a look," proposed Walter t.i.tus. "There must be some mistake. Hold back the blast, Tom."

"All right," and the young inventor disconnected the electrical detonating switch. "I'll come along and have a look too," he added.

"Don't let anybody meddle with the wires, Jack," he said to the young Englishman who was in charge of the dynamo.

Into the dimly-lit tunnel advanced the party of investigators, with Tim Sullivan in the lead.

"Not a man could I find!" he said, murmuring to himself. "Not a man!

An' I mind th' time in Oireland whin th' little people made vanish a whole village like this, jist bekase ould Mike Maguire uprooted a bed of shamrocks."

"That's enough of your superst.i.tions, Tim," warned Job t.i.tus. "If some of the other Indians hear you go on this way they'll desert as they did once before."

"Did they do that?" asked Tom.

"Yes, we had trouble that way when we first began the work. The place here was a howling wilderness then, and there were lots of pumas around.

"A puma is a small sized lion, you know, not specially dangerous unless cornered. Well, some of the men had their families here with them, and a couple of children disappeared. The story got started that there was a big puma--the king of them all--carrying off the little ones, and my brother and I awoke one morning to find every laborer missing. They departed bag and baggage. Afraid of the pumas."

"What did you do?"

"Well, we organized ourselves and our white helpers into a hunting party and killed a lot of the beasts. There wasn't any big one though."

"And what had become of the children?"

"They weren't eaten at all. They had wandered off into the woods, and some natives found them and took care of them. Eventually, they got back home. But it was a long while before we could persuade the Indians to come back. Since then we haven't had any trouble, and I don't want Tim, with his superst.i.tious fancies, to start any."

"But the min are gone!" insisted the Irish foreman, who had listened to this story as he and the others walked along.