Chapter XVII
The Condor
Left to himself, with only the rather silent gang of Peruvian Indiansas company, Tom Swift looked about him. There was not much active workto be done, only to see that the Indians filled the dump cars evenlyfull, so none of the broken rock would spill over the side and litterthe tramway. Then, too, he had to keep the Indians up to the markworking, for these men were no different from any other, and they werejust as inclined to "loaf on the job" when the eye of the "boss" wasturned away.
They did not talk much, murmuring among themselves now and then, andlittle of what they said was intelligible to Tom. But he knew enoughof the language to give them orders, the main one of which was:
"Hurry up!"
Now, having seen to it that the gang of which he was in temporarycharge was busily engaged, Tom had a chance to look about him. Thetunnel was not new to him. Much of his time in the past month had beenspent in its black depths, illuminated, more or less, by the string ofincandescent lights.
"What I want to find," mused Tom, as he walked to and fro, "is theplace where those Indians disappeared. For I'm positive they got awaythrough some hole in this tunnel. They never came out the mainentrance."
Tom held to this view in spite of the fact that nearly every one elsebelieved the contrary--that the men had left by the tunnel mouth, nearwhich Tom happened to be alone at the time.
Now, left to himself, with merely nominal duties, and so disguised thatnone of the workmen would know him for the trim young inventor whooversaw the preparing of the blast charges, Tom Swift walked to andfro, looking for some carefully hidden passage or shaft by means ofwhich the men had got away.
"For it must be well hidden to have escaped observation so long," Tomdecided. "And it must be a natural shaft, or hole, for we are boringinto native rock, and it isn't likely that these Indians ever tried tomake a tunnel here. There must be some natural fissure communicatingwith the outside of the mountain, in a place where no one would see themen coming out."
But though Tom believed this it was another matter to demonstrate hisbelief. In the intervals of seeing that the natives properly loaded thedump cars, and removed as much of the debris as possible, Tom lookedcarefully along the walls and roof of the tunnel thus far excavated.
There were cracks and fissures, it is true, but they were allsuperficial ones, as Tom ascertained by poking a long pole up into them.
"No getting out that way," he said, as he met with failure afterfailure.
Once, while thus engaged, he saw Serato, the Indian foreman lookingnarrowly at him, and Serato said something in his own language whichTom could not understand. But just then along came Tim Sullivan, who,grasping the situation, exclaimed:
"Thot's all roight, now, Serri, me lad!" for thus he contracted theIndian's name. "Thot's a new helper I have, a broth of a bye, an' yezkin kape yer hands off him. He's takin' orders from me!"
"Um!" grunted the Indian. "Wha for he fish in tunnel roof?" for Tom'spole was one like those the Indians used when, on off days, theyemulated Izaak Walton.
"Fishin' is it!" exclaimed Tim. "Begorra 'tis flyin' fish he's afterI'm thinkin'. Lave him alone though, Serri! I'm his boss!"
"Um!" grunted the Indian again, as he moved off into the fartherdarkness.
"Be careful, Tom," whispered the Irishman, when the native had gone."These black imps is mighty suspicious. Maybe thot fellah had a hand inth' disappearances hisself."
"Maybe," admitted Tom. "He may get a percentage on all new hands thatare hired."
Tom kept on with his search, always hoping he might find some hiddenmeans of getting out of the tunnel. But as the days went by, and hediscovered nothing, he began to despair.
"The queer thing about it," mused Tom, "is what has become of the tenmen. Even if they did find some secret means of leaving, what hasbecome of them? They couldn't completely disappear, and they havefamilies and relatives that would make some sort of fuss if they wereout of sight completely this long. I wonder if any inquiries have beenmade about them?"
When Tom came off duty he asked the Titus brothers whether or not anyof the relatives of the missing men had come to seek news about them.None had.
"Then," said Tom, "you can depend on it the men are all right, andtheir relatives know it. I wonder how it would do to make inquiries atthat end? Question some of the relatives."
"Bless my hat band!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, who was at the conference. "Inever thought of that. I'll do it for you."
The odd man had gotten his quinine gathering business well under waynow, and he had some spare time. So, with an interpreter who could betrusted, he went to the native village whence had come nearly all ofthe ten missing men. But though Mr. Damon found some of theirrelatives, the latter, with shrugs of their shoulders, declared theyhad seen nothing of the ones sought.
"And they didn't seem to worry much, either," reported Mr. Damon.
"Then we can depend on it," remarked Tom, "that the men are all rightand their relatives know it. There's some conspiracy here."
So it seemed. But who was at the bottom of it?
"I can't figure out where Blakeson & Grinder come in," said Job Titus."They would have an object in crippling us, but they seem to be workingfrom the financial end, trying to make us fail there. I haven't seenany of their sneaking agents around here lately, and as for Waddingtonhe seems to have stayed up North."
Tom resumed his vigil in the tunnel, poking here and there, but withlittle success. His week was about up, and he would soon have to resumehis character as powder expert, for the debris was nearly all cleanedup, and another blast would have to be fired shortly.
"Well, I'm stumped!" Tom admitted, the day when he was to come on dutyfor the last time as a pretended foreman. "I've hunted all over, and Ican't find any secret passage."
It was warm in the tunnel, and Tom, having seen one train of the dumpcars loaded, sat down to rest on an elevated ledge of rock, where hehad made a sort of easy chair for himself, with empty cement bags forcushions.
The heat, his weariness and the monotonous clank-clank of a water pumpnear by, and the equally monotonous thump of the lumps of rocks in thecars made Tom drowsy. Almost before he knew it he was asleep.
What suddenly awakened him he could not tell. Perhaps it was someinfluence on the brain cells, as when a vivid dream causes us to startup from slumber, or it may have been a voice. For certainly Tom heard avoice, he declared afterward.
As he roused up he found himself staring at the rocky wall of thetunnel. And yet the wall seemed to have an opening in it and in theopening, as if it were in the frame of a picture, appeared the face Tomhad seen at his library the day Job Titus called on him--the face ofWaddington!
Tom sat up so quickly that he hit his head sharply on a projecting rockspur, and, for the moment he "saw stars." And with the appearance ofthese twinkling points of light the face of Waddington seemed to fadeaway, as might a vision in a dream.
"Bless my salt mackerel, as Mr. Damon would say!" cried Tom. "What haveI discovered?"
He rubbed his head where he had struck it, and then passed his handbefore his eyes, to make sure he was awake. But the vision, if visionit was, had vanished, and he saw only the bare rock wall. However, theecho of the voice remained in his ears, and, looking down toward thetunnel floor Tom saw Serato, the Indian foreman.
"Were you speaking to me?" asked Tom, for the man understood and spokeEnglish fairly well.
"No, sar. I not know you there!" and the foreman seemed startled atseeing Tom. Clearly he was in a fright.
"You were speaking!" insisted Tom.
"No, sar!" The man shook his head.
"To some one up there!" went on the young inventor, waving his handtoward the spot where he had seen the face in the rock.
"Me speak to roof? No, sar!" Serato laughed.
Tom did not know what to believe.
"You hear me tell um lazy man to much hurry," the Indian went on. "Menot know you sleep there, sar!"
/> "Oh, all right," Tom said, recollecting that he must keep up hisdisguise. "Maybe I was dreaming."
"Yes, sar," and the foreman hurried on, with a backward glance over hisshoulder.
"Now was I dreaming or not?" thought Tom. "I'm going to have a look atthat place though, where I saw Waddington's face. Or did I imagine it?"
He got a long pole and a powerful flash lamp, and when he had a chance,unobserved, he poked around in the vicinity where he had seen the face.
But there was only solid rock.
"It must have been a dream," Tom concluded. "I've been thinking toomuch about this business. I'll have to give up. I can't solve themystery of the missing men."
The next day, much disappointed, he resumed his own character asexplosive expert, and prepared for another blast. The net result of hiswatch was that he became suspicious of Serato, and so informed theTitus Brothers.
"Oh, but you're mistaken," said Job. "We have had him for years, onother contracts in Peru, and we trust him."
"Well, I don't," Tom said, but he had to let it go at that.
Another blast was set off, but it was not very successful.
"The rock seems to be getting harder the farther in we go," commentedWalter Titus. "We're not up to where we ought to be."
"I'll have to look into it," answered Tom. "I may have to change thepowder mixture. Guess I'll go up the mountain a way, and see if thereare any outcroppings of rock there that would give me an idea of whatlies underneath."
Accordingly, while the men in the tunnel were clearing away the rockloosened by the blast, Tom, one day, taking his electric rifle withhim, went up the mountain under which the big bore ran.
He located, by computation, the spot beneath which the end of thetunnel then was, and began collecting samples of the outcropping ledge.He wanted to analyze these pieces of stone later. Koku was with him,and, giving the giant a bag of stones to carry, Tom walked on ratheridly.
It was a wild and desolate region in which he found himself on the sideof the mountain. Beyond him stretched towering and snow-clad peaks, andhigh in the air were small specks, which he knew to be condors,watching with their eager eyes for their offal food.
As Tom and Koku made their way along the mountain trail they cameunexpectedly upon an Indian workman who was gathering herbs and bark,an industry by which many of the natives added to their scantylivelihood. The woman was familiar with the appearance of the whitemen, and nodded in friendly fashion.
Tom passed on, thinking of many things, when he was suddenly startledby a scream from the woman. It was a scream of such terror and agonythat, for the moment, Tom was stunned into inactivity. Then, as heturned, he saw a great condor sweeping down out of the air, the windfairly whistling through the big, outstretched wings.
"Jove!" ejaculated Tom. "Can the bird be going to attack the woman?"
But this was not the object of the condor. It was aiming to strike,with its fierce talons, at a point some paces distant from where thewoman stood, and in the intervals between her screams Tom heard hercry, in her native tongue:
"My baby! My baby! The beast-bird will carry off my baby!"
Then Tom understood. The woman herb-gatherer had brought her infantwith her on her quest, and had laid it down on a bed of soft grasswhile she worked. And it was this infant, wrapped as Tom afterward sawin a piece of deer-skin, at which the condor was aiming.
"Master shoot!" cried Koku, pointing to the down-sweeping bird.
"You bet I'll shoot!" cried Tom.
Throwing his electric rifle to his shoulder, Tom pressed the switchtrigger. The unseen but powerful force shot straight at the condor.
The outstretched wings fell limp, the great body seemed to shrivel up,and, with a crash, the bird fell into the underbrush, breaking thetwigs and branches with its weight. The electric rifle, a full accountof which was given in the volume entitled "Tom Swift and His ElectricRifle," had done its work well.
With a scream, in which was mingled a cry of thanks, the woman threwherself on the sleeping child. The condor had fallen dead not threepaces from it.
Tom Swift had shot just in time.