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 Titus, 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 Titus 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. Titus," 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 Titus. "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 superstitions, Tim," warned Job Titus. "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 un