Ahead of the Army

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Ahead Of The Army

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[Illustration: IT WAS SEVERE WORK, BUT IT WAS DONE WITH EAGER ENTHUSIASM (See page 277)]

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Ahead Of The Army

by W. O. STODDARD

AUTHOR OF "THE ERRAND BOY OF ANDREW JACKSON," "JACK MORGAN," "THE NOANK'S LOG," ETC.

Illustrated By C. Chase Emerson

Boston Lothrop Publishing Company

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COPYRIGHT, 1903, by LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published June, 1903

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Preface

Lest any one should suspect exaggeration in the pictures of Mexican affairs in the old time, which are presented by Senor Carfora, it may be well to offer a few facts by way of explanation. During sixty-three years of the national life of the Republic of Mexico, from the establishment of its independence in 1821 to the year 1884, nearly all of its successive changes of government were accompanied by more or less violence and bloodshed. There have been fifty-five Mexican Presidents; at one revolutionary period, four within three months, and to this list must be added two emperors and one regency. Both of the emperors were shot, so were several of the Presidents, and nearly all of the others incurred the penalty of banishment. How this came to be so will possibly be better understood by the young Americans who will kindly travel with Senor Carfora and his generals and his two armies, commanded for him by General Scott and General Santa Anna. It is the wish of the author that all his young friends may cultivate a deeper and kinder interest in the wonderful land of Anahuac and its people. The now peaceful and rapidly improving republic of the South is, in fact, only a kind of younger brother of the United States. Mexico has no more sincere well-wisher than

William O. Stoddard.

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CONTENTS Page

Far-away Guns 11 The Race of the Goshawk 22 The Fortune of War 47 Completely Stranded 69 The Work of the Norther 84 Forward, March 99 The Land of the Montezumas 119 Out of the Tierra Caliente 136 Leaving the Hacienda 157 Pictures of the Past 167 Ned's News 181 A Storm Coming 193 The Revolution 207 The Despatch-bearer 221 Under Fire 240 General Scott and His Army 254 The Mountain Passes 267 Senor Carfora Trapped 281 The Stars and Stripes in Tenochtitlan 294

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ILLUSTRATIONS Page

It was severe work, but it was done with eager enthusiasm Frontispiece "Do you see that? What does it mean?" 30 "We have orders to take care of you" 114 Ned saw a long, bright blade of a lance pointed at his bosom 286

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Ahead Of The Army

Chapter I.

Far-Away Guns

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The long surges of the Gulf of Mexico were beating heavily upon the sandy beach of Point Isabel, but the dull and boding sounds were not the roar of the surf. There came a long silence, and then another boom. Each in succession entered the white tents of the American army on the upland, carrying with it a message of especial importance to all who were within. It was also of more importance to the whole world than any man who heard it could then have imagined. It spoke to the sentries at their posts, and compelled them to turn and listen. It halted all patrolling and scouting parties, making them stand still to utter sudden exclamations. More than one mounted officer reined in his horse to hear, and then wheeled to spur away toward the tent of General Zachary Taylor, commanding the forces of the United States upon the Rio Grande.

In one small tent, in the camp of the Seventh Infantry, the first boom stirred up a young man who had been sleeping, and he may have been dreaming of home. He was in the uniform of a second lieutenant, and in one respect he was exactly like all the other younger officers and most of the men of that army, for never before had they heard the sound of a hostile cannon. War was new to them, and they were not aware how many of them were now entering a preparatory school in which they were to be trained for service in a war of vastly greater proportions and for the command of its contending armies, on either side.

Up sprang the young lieutenant and stepped to the door of his tent. He was short, strongly built, and his alert, vigorous movements indicated unusual nerve, vitality, and muscular strength.

"Grant, my boy," he muttered to himself, "that comes from the fort! The Mexicans are attacking! It's more than twenty miles away. I didn't know you could hear guns as far as that, but the wind's in the right direction. Hurrah! The war has begun!"

He was only half right. The war had been begun long years before by aggressive American settlers in the Spanish-Mexican State of Texas. Now, at last, the United States had taken up the same old conflict, and only about half of the American people at all approved of it.

Grant did not linger in front of his tent. He walked rapidly away to where stood a group of officers, hardly any of them older than himself.

"Meade," he demanded of one of them, "what do you think of that?"

"I think I don't know how long that half-finished fort can hold out," responded Lieutenant Meade, and half a dozen other voices instantly agreed with him as to the perils surrounding the small besieged garrison.

It was hardly possible, they said, that it could hold out until the arrival of the main army. This, too, would have to fight all the way against superior numbers, but that was a thing which it could do, and they were all wild with eagerness to be on the march, in answer to the summons of those far-away guns.

There were no railroads to speak of, and only the first small beginnings of telegraphs in the year 1846. The news of the first fighting would therefore be slow in reaching the President and Congress at Washington, so that they might lawfully make what is called a formal declaration of war. Much had already been taken for granted, but the American government was at that hour anxiously leaning southward and listening for the expected roar of Mexican cannon. It came, as rapidly as General Taylor could send it. A swift despatch-boat, with all her canvas up, went speeding across the gulf to New Orleans. Thence, in the hands of special couriers, it would gallop all the remaining distance. Meantime, the struggle at the Rio Grande frontier would continue, just as if all the legal arrangements had been made, but it would be weeks before Europe could be advised of what was going on. All this, too, when this fight over the annexation of Texas was about to lift the Republic into a foremost place among the nations. It was to give her all the Pacific coast which she now has, except Oregon and Alaska, with the gold of California and the silver of the mountains. Among its consequences were to be the terrible Civil War, the abolition of slavery, the acquisition of the Sandwich Islands, and many another vast change in the history of our country and in that of these very European nations which were then ignorantly sitting still and thinking little about it, because they had no ocean cable telegraphs to outrun the swift clipper ships.

There were couriers racing inland in all directions to tell the people of Mexico, also, that war had come, but the despatches of the general commanding their forces on the Texas border were carried by a swift schooner from Matamoras, on the coast, directly to Vera Cruz. A messenger from that port had before him a gallop of only two hundred and sixty miles to the city of Mexico. President Paredes, therefore, had full information of the attack on the American fort sooner than did President Polk by a number of very important days.

These were bright May days, and during all of them there were other things going on which had a direct relation to the cannon-firing and the siege. For instance, all the commerce between Mexico and the rest of the world was deeply interested, and so were all the warships of the United States, which were prepared to interfere with that commerce pretty soon, and shut it off. There were merchant vessels at sea to whose captains and owners it was a serious question whether or not cruisers carrying the Stars and Stripes would permit them to reach their intended port and deliver their cargoes. Whatever may have been the case with all the rest of these vessels, one of them in particular appeared to be rushing along in a great hurry at the very hour when Lieutenant Grant woke up so suddenly and walked out of his tent.

She carried an American flag, somewhat tattered, and she was spreading quite as much canvas as a prudent skipper might have considered safe under the strong gale that was blowing. She was bark-rigged, of about four hundred tons burden, and was headed westward in the Nicholas Channel, off the northerly coast of the Island of Cuba. There was a high sea running, but the ship stood up well, and the few men who were on deck could get about easily. Even a boy of apparently not over seventeen, who came to a halt near the mainmast, managed to keep his balance with some help from a rope. That he did so was a credit to him, and it helped to give him a sailor-like and jaunty air. So did his blue trousers, blue flannel shirt with a wide collar, and the sidewise pitch of his tarpaulin hat. He might as well have remarked aloud that he was one of those boys who are up to almost anything, and who think small potatoes of a mere storm at sea. Near him, however, stood a pair of men, either of whom might have felt as much at home under another flag than the one which was now fluttering its damaged bunting above them. The shorter of the two was a very dark-faced gentleman of perhaps forty, with piercing black eyes. In spite of his civilian dress, he wore an expression that was decidedly warlike, or soldierly.

"Captain Kemp," he said to his companion, "will you be good enough to tell me why we are in the Nicholas Channel?"

"No, Senor Zuroaga," growled the large-framed, roughly rigged and grim-looking sailor. "I'm cap'n o' this ship, and I don't give explanations. We've had gales on gales since we left port. One course is as good as another, if you're not losing distance. We'll reach Vera Cruz now three or four days sooner than we reckoned. All those war insurance risks were paid for for nothing."

"I'm not so sure of that," was slowly and thoughtfully responded. "Not if one of Uncle Sam's officers should get a look into the hold of this ship."

"You're a Mexican, anyhow," said Captain Kemp, surlily. "You know enough to keep your mouth shut. You don't really have to know anything about the cargo. Besides, it was peace when we sailed. We shall make a safe landing,--if nothing happens on the way."

"Captain," said the Mexican, "it does not take long to make a declaration of war when both sides are determined to have one."

"You're wrong there, Senor Zuroaga," replied the captain, emphatically. "Mexico doesn't want a brush with the States. She isn't strong enough. The Yankees can whip her out of Texas any day."

"That is not the point at all," replied Zuroaga, sadly. "The fact is, the Texan Yankees want a war for revenge, and the American party in power would like to annex a great deal more than Texas. President Paredes needs a war to keep himself in power and help him put on a crown. Old Santa Anna wants a war to give him a chance to return from exile and get control of the army. If we ever do reach Vera Cruz, we shall hear of fighting when we get there."

"Perhaps," said the captain, "but it will be only a short war, and at the end of it the United States will have stolen Texas."

"No, senor," said Zuroaga, with a fierce flash in his eyes. "All educated Mexicans believe that Texas or any other of the old Spanish provinces has a right to set up for itself. Almost every State has actually tried it. We have had revolution after revolution."

"Anarchy after anarchy!" growled the captain. "Such a nation as that needs a king of some kind, or else the strong hand of either England or France or the United States."

"Mexico! A nation!" exclaimed Senor Zuroaga, after a moment of silence. "We are not a nation yet. Within our boundaries there are several millions of ignorant Indians, peons, rancheros and the like, that are owned rather than ruled by a few scores of rich landholders who represent the old Spanish military grants. Just now President Paredes is able to overawe as many of these chiefs as he and others have not murdered. So he is President, or whatever else he may choose to call himself. The mere title is nothing, for the people do not know the difference between one and another. Now, Captain Kemp, one sure thing is that the Yankees have taken Texas and mean to keep it. They will fight for it. One other sure thing is that General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna will come back if he can, to carry on that war and supersede Paredes. If he does so, there is danger ahead for some men. He will settle with all his old enemies, and he loves bloodshed for its own sake. When he cannot be killing men, he will sit in a cockpit all day, just for the pleasure of seeing the birds slaughtering one another. I believe he had my own father shot quite as much for love of murder as for the opportunity it gave him for confiscating our family estates in Oaxaca."

"You seem to have enough to hate him for, anyhow, and I don't blame you," replied the captain, as he turned away to give some orders to the sailors, and all the while the boy who stood near them had been listening.

"Well, Ned Crawford," he muttered to himself, "that's it, is it? Father didn't seem to believe there would be any war. He said there would be plenty of time, anyhow, for this old _Goshawk_ bark to make the round trip to New York by way of Vera Cruz."

A great lurch of the ship nearly swung him off his feet just then, and he was holding on very firmly to his rope when he added:

"He said I'd learn a great deal all the way, and I shouldn't wonder if I'm learning something new just now. What do they mean by that dangerous cargo in the hold, and our being captured by American ships of war? That's a thing father didn't know anything about. I guess I can see how it is, though. Captain Kemp isn't an American, and he'd do almost anything to make money. Anything honest, I mean. How it does blow! Well, let her blow! Father said he was putting me into a first-rate commercial school, and here I am right in the middle of it."

Ned was indeed at school, and he seemed likely to have unexpected teachers, but so is every other wide-awake young fellow, just like Ulysses Grant and his crowd of young associates in their hot weather war school over there on the Texas border.

Senor Zuroaga also had now walked away, and Ned was left to hold by his rope, looking out upon the tossing sea and wondering more and more what sort of adventures he and the _Goshawk_ might be so swiftly racing on into.

Chapter II.

The Race Of The Goshawk

A long day had passed and a dark night had come. The air of it was hot and sultry over all the regions around the Gulf of Mexico. Something appeared to be weighing it down, as if it might be loaded with the great events which were about to come.

It was gloomy enough at and around the besieged American fort on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, but every now and then the darkness and the silence were broken by the flashes and thunders of the Mexican artillery, and the responses of the cannon of the bravely defended fortress. This was already partly in ruins, and the besiegers had good reasons for their expectation that in due season they were to see the Stars and Stripes come down from the shattered rampart. It did not seem to them at all possible that the small force under General Taylor, twenty miles away at the seaside, could cut through overwhelming numbers to the relief of the garrison.

It was just as dark in the American camp on the coast, but there were many campfires burning, and by the light of these and numberless lanterns there were busy preparations making for the forward march, which was to begin in the morning. There was an immense amount of anxiety in the minds of all the Americans who were getting ready, but it was only on account of the fort and garrison, for that little army had a remarkable degree of confidence in its own fighting capacity.

It is never as dark on the land, apparently, as it is at sea, where even the lights hung out by a ship seem to make all things darker, except the white crests of the billows. One ship's lantern, however, was so hung that it threw down a dim light upon a pair who were sitting on the deck near the stern.

"Senor Zuroaga," said one of them, "I wish it was daylight."

"So do I," responded his companion, with hardly a trace of foreign accent. "The storm's nearly over, but I had so much on my mind that I could not sleep. The fact is, I came up to try and make up my mind where we are. I must reach Vera Cruz before Santa Anna does, if I can. If I do not, I may be shot after landing. I shall be safer, too, after President Paredes has marched with his army for the Rio Grande. So I hope for war. Anyhow, the commander at Vera Cruz is a friend of mine."

"I guess I understand," said Ned. "I heard what you said about the way things are going. But what did you mean about our being in the Nicholas Channel? What has that got to do with it?"

"Talk Spanish!" replied the senor, with whom the boy appeared to be upon good terms. "I do not want any of those sailors to understand me, though I'm very glad that you can. How did that happen?"

"Well," said Ned, "father's been all his life in the Cuban and Mexican trade, and I'm to grow up into it. I can't remember just when they began to teach me Spanish. I was thinking about the war, though. If it's coming, I want to see some of the fighting."

"You may see more than you will like," said his friend in his own tongue. "Now, as to where we are, remember your geography."

"I can remember every map in it," said Ned, confidently.

"Good!" said the senor. "Now! You know that the Gulf Stream runs along the coast of Florida. Our road from Liverpool to the gulf was to have taken us by that way. Instead of that, we came around below the Bahama Islands, and here we are off the north coast of Cuba. Captain Kemp's reason is that there might be too many American cruisers along the Florida coast, and he does not care to be stopped by one of them, if the war has already begun. We would not be allowed to go any further."

"I see," said Ned. "Of course not. They would stop us, to keep us from being captured by the Mexicans when we got to Vera Cruz."

"Not exactly," said the senor, half laughing, "but it might cost your father and his partners their ship and cargo. That is the secret the sailors are not to know. Away up northward there, a hundred miles or so, are the Florida Keys, and among them is the United States naval station at Key West. There are ships of war there, and Captain Kemp will not sail any nearer to them than he can help. Ned, did you have any idea that you were sitting over a Mexican powder-magazine?"

"No!" exclaimed Ned. "What on earth do you mean?"

"I think I had better tell you," said the senor. "I half suspected it before we sailed, and I learned the whole truth afterward. The New York and Liverpool firm that your father belongs to sent on board an honest and peaceable cargo, but there was a good deal of room left in the hold, and the captain filled it up with cannon-balls, musket-bullets, and gunpowder from the English agents of no less a man than General Santa Anna himself. It is all for his army, whenever he gets one, but it goes first to the castle of San Juan de Ulua, at Vera Cruz. If war has been declared, or if it has in any way begun, the whole thing is what they call contraband of war, and the _Goshawk_ is liable to be captured and confiscated."

"Phew!" whistled Ned. "Wonder how father'd like that! Anyhow, we don't know there's any war."

"We'd be in trouble anyhow," said the senor. "But we are all in the dark about it. We have been over three weeks on the way, and all the war news we had when we started was nearly a month old. We can only guess what has been going on. Here we are, though, in a storm that is driving us along first-rate into the Gulf of Mexico. We may be four days' sail from Vera Cruz in a bee-line, and the _Goshawk_ is a racer, but we may not be able to make a straight course. Well, well, the captain will keep on all the canvas that's safe, and we may get there. Hullo! the day is beginning to dawn. Now our real danger begins."

He said no more, and Ned walked forward with something altogether new on his mind. An American boy, crammed full of patriotism, and wishing that he were in General Taylor's army, he was, nevertheless, by no fault of his own, one of the crew of a ship which was carrying ammunition to the enemy. He almost felt as if he were fighting his own country, and it made him sick. He had an idea, moreover, that Senor Zuroaga was only half willing to help his old enemy Santa Anna.

"I don't care if Captain Kemp is an Englishman," he said to himself, "he had no business to run father and his partners into such a scrape."

That might be so, and perhaps neither Kemp, nor Zuroaga, nor even Ned himself, knew all about the laws of war which govern such cases, but just then there flashed across his mind a very dismal suggestion, as he stared down at the deck he stood on.

"What," he asked himself, "if any accident should touch off those barrels of powder down there? Why, we'd all be blown sky-high and nobody'd ever know what had become of us. There'd be nothing but chips left."

He tried not to think about that, and went below to get his breakfast, while Captain Kemp ordered his sailors to send up another sail, remarking to Senor Zuroaga:

"We must make the most we can of this wind. Every hour counts now. I'll take the _Goshawk_ to Vera Cruz, or I'll run her under water."

"Have you any idea where we are just now?" asked the senor.

"Well on into the gulf," said the captain, cheerfully. "We made a splendid run in the night, thanks to the gale. I hope it will blow on, and I think there is no danger of our being overhauled until we are off the Mexican coast. I wish, though, that I knew whether or not the war has actually been declared."

"The declaration isn't everything," replied the senor. "If there has been any fighting at all, American cruisers have a right, after that, to question ships bound for a hostile port, and to stop and seize all contraband of war. After goods are once seized, it isn't easy to get them back again."

"Sail ho!" came down from aloft at that moment.

"Where away?" called back the captain.

"Northerly, sir. Looks like a shark, sir."

"Can you make out her flag?" was inquired, almost anxiously.

The man on the lookout plied his telescope a full half-minute before he responded:

"Stars and Stripes, sir. Sloop-o'-war, sir. She's changin' her course, and she's makin' for us, I reckon."

"Let her head!" growled the captain. "This bark'll bear more sail. Hoist away there, men. Let her have it! Senor, there's one thing I'll do right off. It may be our best chance if she should overhaul us."

He did not explain his meaning just then, but another sail went up and something else came down. In a few minutes more, when Ned came on deck again, he suddenly felt worse than ever. Not long before, when the sun was rising, he had been on an American ship, with the flag of his country flying above him, but now his first glance aloft drew from him a loud exclamation, for he found that while below he had apparently been turned into an Englishman, and away up yonder the gale was playing with the Red Cross banner of the British Empire. He stared at it for a moment, and then he made an excited rush for Senor Zuroaga. He might have reached him sooner, but for a lurch of the _Goshawk_, which sent him sprawling full length upon the deck. It did not hurt him much, however, and as soon as he was on his feet, he blurted out, angrily:

"Senor! I say! Do you see that? What does it mean?"

The Mexican laughed aloud, but not only Ned Crawford but several of the sailors were eyeing that unexpected bunting with red and angry faces. They also were Americans, and they had national prejudices.

"You don't like the British flag, eh?" he said. "I do, then, just now. An American cruiser would not fire a shot at that flag half so quick as it would at your own."

"Why wouldn't she?" asked Ned.

[Illustration: "DO YOU SEE THAT? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?"]

"Because," said the senor, a little dryly, "the American skipper hasn't any British navy behind him, ready to take the matter up. It's a protection in case we can't outrun that sloop-of-war. The men won't care a cent, as soon as they know it's only a sea dodge to get into port with."

Sailor-like, they were indeed easily satisfied with whatever the captain chose to tell them, and on went the _Goshawk_ as a British craft, but she was nevertheless carrying supplies to the Mexican army.

Senor Zuroaga had brought up a double spy-glass of his own, and, after studying the stranger through it, he handed it to Ned, remarking:

"Take a look at her. She's a beauty. She is drawing nearer on this tack, but nobody knows yet whether she can outrun us or not."

Ned took the glass with an unexpected feeling growing within him that he hoped she could not do so. He did not wish to be caught on board a British vessel taking powder and shot to kill Americans with. As he put the glass to his eyes, however, the sloop-of-war appeared to have suddenly come nearer. It was as if the _Goshawk_ were already within reach of her guns, and she became a dangerous thing to look at. She was not, as yet, under any great press of canvas, for her commander may not have imagined that any merchant vessel would try to get away from him. There were two things, however, about which nobody on board the _Goshawk_ was thinking. The first was that, while the American ship-of-war captain had not heard the firing at the fort on the Rio Grande, he was under a strong impression that war had been declared. The other thing came out in a remark which he made to a junior officer standing by him.

"It won't do!" he declared, emphatically. "I don't at all like that change of flags. It means mischief. There is something suspicious about that craft. We must bring her to, and find out what's the matter with her."

The distance between the two vessels was still too great for anything but a few signals, to which Captain Kemp responded with others which may have been of his own invention, for the signal officer on board the Yankee cruiser could make nothing of them. The _Goshhawk_, moreover, did not shorten sail, and her steersman kept her away several points more southerly, instead of bringing her course nearer to that of the cruiser.

"I see!" said her captain, as he watched the change. "She means to get away from us. It won't do. As soon as we are within range, I'll give her a gun. She may be a Mexican privateer, for all I know."

At all events, under the circumstances, as he thought, the change of flags had made it his duty to inquire into her character, and he decided to do so, even if, as he said, he should have to send one shot ahead of her and then a dozen into her.

There is something wonderfully exciting about a race of any kind. Men will make use of anything, from a donkey to a steamboat, to engineer a trial of speed and endurance. Then they will stand around and watch the running, as if the future welfare of the human race depended upon the result. Even the _Goshhawk_ sailors, who had previously grumbled at the British flag above them, were entirely reconciled to the situation, now that it included the interesting question whether or not their swift bark could show her heels to the cruiser. They were very much in doubt about it, for the ships of the American navy had a high and well-earned reputation as chasers. They might have been somewhat encouraged if they had known that the _Portsmouth_, sloop-of-war, had been at sea a long time without going into any dock to have her bottom scraped clean of its accumulated barnacles. She was by no means in the best of training for a marine race-course.

An hour went by and then another. The two vessels were now running on almost parallel lines, so that any attempt of the sloop to draw nearer cost her just so much of chasing distance. It might be that they were, in fact, nearly matched, now that the wind had lulled a little, and both of them were able to send up more canvas without too much risk of having their sticks blown out of them. It looked like it, but the Yankee captain had yet another idea in his sagacious head.

"Let her keep on," he said. "The old _Kennebec_ is out there, somewhere westerly, not far away. That vagabond may find himself under heavier guns than ours before sunset. Lieutenant, give him a gun."

"Ay, ay, sir!" came back, and in a moment more there was a flash and a report at the bow of the _Portsmouth_.

Both range and distance had been well calculated, for an iron messenger, ordering the _Goshhawk_ to heave to, fell into the water within a hundred yards of her stern.

"That's near enough for the present," said the American commander, but Captain Kemp exclaimed, in astonishment:

"They are firing on the British flag, are they? Then there is something up that we don't know anything about. We must get away at all risks."

They were not doing so just now, although another change of course and a strong puff of the gale carried the _Goshhawk_ further out of range. The fact was that her pursuer did not feel quite ready to land shot on board of her, believing that he was doing well enough and that his prize would surely be taken sooner or later. Besides, if she were, indeed, to become a prize, no sound-minded sea-captain could be willing to shoot away her selling value or that of her cargo.

Noon came, and there did not appear to be any important change in the relative positions of the two ships. At times, indeed, the _Goshhawk_ had gained a quarter-mile or so, but only to lose it again, as is apt to be the case in ocean races. She was not at all tired, however, and both of the contestants had all the wind they needed.

Two hours more went slowly by, and Captain Kemp began to exhibit signs of uneasiness at the unexpected persistence with which he was followed.

"What on earth can be the matter?" he remarked, aloud. "I'd have thought she'd get tired of it before this--"

"Captain!" sharply interrupted Zuroaga, standing at his elbow, glass in hand. "Another sail! Off there, southerly. Seems to be a full-rigged ship. What are we to do now?"

"Keep on!" roared the captain, and then he turned to respond to a similar piece of unpleasant information which came down from the lookout.

"We'll soon know what she is," he remarked, but not as if he very much wished to do so. "What I'd like to do would be to sail on into the darkest kind of a rainy night. That's our chance, if we can get it."

It might be, but at that very moment the commander of the _Portsmouth_ was asserting to his first lieutenant:

"There comes the _Kennebec_, my boy. We'll have this fellow now. We'll teach him not to play tricks with national flags and man-o'-war signals."

The race across the Gulf of Mexico was now putting on new and interesting features, but Ned Crawford, posted well forward to watch the course of events and what might have been called the race-course, sagely remarked:

"I don't know that two horses can run any faster than one can. We are as far ahead as ever we were."

That would have been of more importance if the newcomer had not been so much to the southward and westward, rather than behind them. She was, of course, several miles nearer to the _Goshhawk_ than she was to the _Portsmouth_, and neither of these had as yet been able to make out her flag with certainty. That she was a full-rigged ship was sure enough, and if Ned had been upon her deck instead of upon his own, he would have discovered that she was heavily armed and in apple-pie order. At this very moment a burly officer upon her quarter-deck was roaring, angrily, in response to some information which had been given him:

"What's that? A British ship chased by a Yankee cruiser? Lieutenant, I think the _Falcon_'ll take a look at that. These Yankees are getting too bumptious altogether. It's as if they thought they owned the gulf! Put her head two points north'ard. Humph! It's about time they had a lesson."

There had been some temporary trouble with the flag of the _Falcon_, but it had now been cleared of its tangle, and was swinging out free. It was of larger size than the British bunting displayed by the Goshawk. It was only a few minutes, therefore, before Captain Kemp had a fresh trouble on his mind, for his telescope had told him the meaning of that flag.

"Worse than ever!" he exclaimed. "She'd make us heave to and show our papers. Then she'd hand us right over, and no help for it. No, sir! Our only way is to scud from both of them. Some of our English frigates are slow goers, and this may be one of that kind."

He was in less immediate peril, perhaps, because of the determination of the angry British captain to speak to the Yankee first, and demand an explanation of this extraordinary affair. This it was his plain duty to do, and the attempt to do it would shortly put him and all his guns between the _Portsmouth_ and the _Goshhawk_. This operation was going on at the end of another hour, when Captain Kemp's lookout shouted down to him:

"Sail ho, sir! 'Bout a mile ahead o' the British frigate. Can't quite make her out yet, sir."

"I declare!" groaned the captain. "This 'ere's getting kind o' thick!"

The weather also was getting thicker, and all three of the racers were shortly under a prudent necessity for reducing their excessive spreads of canvas. The first mate of the _Goshhawk_ had even been compelled to expostulate with his overexcited skipper.

"Some of it's got to come down, sir," he asserted. "If we was to lose a spar, we're gone, sure as guns!"

"In with it, then," said the captain. "I wish both of 'em 'd knock out a stick or two. It'd be a good thing for us."

At all events, a lame horse is not likely to win a race, and the _Goshhawk_ was doing as well as were either of the others.

Under such circumstances, it was not long before the _Falcon_ and the _Portsmouth_ were within speaking-trumpet distance of each other, both of them losing half a mile to the _Goshhawk_ while they were getting together. Rapid and loud-voiced indeed were the explanations which passed between the two commanders. At the end of them, the wrath of the Englishman was turned entirely against the culprit bark, which had trifled with his flag.

"We must take her, sir!" he shouted. "She's a loose fish o' some kind."

It was while this conversation was going on that Senor Zuroaga, after long and careful observations, reported to Captain Kemp concerning the far-away stranger to the westward.

"She is a Frenchman, beyond a doubt. Are all the nations making a naval rendezvous in the Gulf of Mexico?"

"Nothing extraordinary," said the captain. "But they're all more'n usually on the watch, on account o' the war, if it's coming."

It was precisely so. War surely brings disturbance and losses to others besides those who are directly engaged in it, and all the nations having commercial relations with Mexico were expecting their cruisers in the gulf to act as a kind of sea police. Moreover, a larger force than usual would probably be on hand and wide awake.

The day was going fast, and the weather promised to shorten it. Ned was now wearing an oilskin, for he would not have allowed any amount of rain to have driven him below. He and all the rest on board the _Goshhawk_ were aware that their pursuers were again beginning to gain on them perceptibly. It was a slow process, but it was likely to be a sure one, for the men-of-war could do better sailing in a heavy sea and under shortened canvas than could a loaded vessel like the saucy merchant bark.

"I'm afraid they'll catch us!" groaned Ned. "I s'pose they could make us all prisoners of war,--if there is any war. Oh, I wish all that powder and shot had been thrown overboard!"

It did not look, just now, as if the Mexican army would ever get any benefit from it, for even the French stranger to leeward seemed to be putting on an air of having evil intentions. Captain Kemp had made her out to be a corvette of moderate size, perhaps a sixteen-gun ship, and she would be quite likely to co-operate with the police boats of England and America in arresting any suspicious wanderer in those troubled waters.

Darker grew the gloom and a light mist came sweeping over the sea. Both pursuers and pursued began to swing out lights, and before long the mate of the _Goshhawk_ came to Captain Kemp to inquire, in a puzzled way:

"I say, Cap'n, what on earth do you do that for? It'll help 'em to foller us, and lose us all the benefit o' the dark."

"No, it won't," growled the captain. "You wait and see. I've sighted one more light, off there ahead of us, and I'm going to make it do something for the _Goshhawk_. Those other chaps can't see it yet."

"What in all the world can he be up to?" thought Ned, as he listened, but the cunning skipper of the bark had all his wits about him.

The lookouts of the men-of-war had indeed been taking note thus far of only their own lanterns and the glimmer on their intended prize. They may even have wondered, as did her own mate, why she should aid them in keeping track of her. At all events, they had little doubt of having her under their guns before morning. Senor Zuroaga himself sat curled up under his waterproof well aft, and now and then he appeared to be chuckling, as if he knew something which amused him. Half an hour later, when all the lights of the _Goshhawk_ suddenly went out, he actually broke into a ringing laugh. Her course was changed to almost due north at that very moment. This would bring her across the track of the _Portsmouth_ and within a mile of that dangerous cruiser's bow guns. They might not be quite so dangerous, however, if her gunners should be unable to see a mark at that distance through the mist. The fifth light, dead ahead, now became itself only the fourth, and it was immediately the sole attraction for the watchers in the rigging of the several war police-boats. This stranger was going westwardly, at a fair rate of speed, and its light was exceptionally brilliant. In fact, it grew more and more so during an anxious thirty minutes that followed, but it was the French corvette which first came within hailing distance, to receive an answer in angry Portuguese, which the French officers could not make head or tail of. Even after receiving further communications in broken Portuguese-Spanish, all they could do was to compel the Brazilian schooner, _Gonzaga_, laden with honest coffee from Rio for New Orleans, to heave to as best she might until the next arrival came within hail. This proved to be the British frigate, and her disappointed captain at once pretty sharply explained to the Frenchmen the difference between a two-master from Rio and a British-Yankee runaway bark from nobody knew where. Then came sweeping along the gallant _Portsmouth_, and there was need for additional conversation all around. Some of it was of an exceedingly discontented character, although the several captains were doing their best to be polite to each other, whatever derogatory remarks they might feel disposed to make concerning the craft which was carrying Ned Crawford and his badly wounded patriotism.

Far away to the northwest, hidden by the darkness, the _Goshhawk_ was all this while flying along, getting into greater safety with every knot she was making, and Captain Kemp remarked to Ned:

"My boy, your father won't lose a cent, after all--not unless we find Vera Cruz blockaded. But our danger isn't all over yet, and it's well for us that we've slipped out of this part of it."

"Captain Kemp!" exclaimed Ned, "I believe father'd be willing to lose something, rather than have the Mexicans get that ammunition."

"Very likely he would," laughed the captain, "but I'm an Englishman, and I don't care. What's more, I'm like a great many Americans. Millions of them believe that the Mexicans are in the right in this matter."

That was a thing which nobody could deny, and Ned was silenced so far as the captain's sense of national duty was concerned.

Hundreds of miles to the westward, at that early hour of the evening, far beyond the path of the storm which had been sweeping the eastern and southern waters of the gulf, the American army, under General Taylor, lay bivouacked. It was several miles nearer the besieged fort than it had been in the morning, for this was the 8th of May. There had been sharp fighting at intervals since the middle of the forenoon, beginning at a place called Palo Alto, or "The Tall Trees," and the Mexicans had been driven back with loss. Any cannonading at the fort could be heard more plainly now, and it was certain that it had not yet surrendered.

Near the centre of the lines occupied by the Seventh Regiment, a young officer sat upon the grass. He held in one hand a piece of army bread, from which he now and then took a bite, but he was evidently absorbed in thought. He took off his hat at last and stared out into the gloom.

"The Mexican army is out there somewhere," he remarked, slowly. "We are likely to have another brush with them to-morrow. Well! this is real war. I've seen my first battle, and I know just how a fellow feels under fire. I wasn't at all sure how it would be, but I know now. He doesn't feel first-rate, by any means. Those fellows that say they like it are all humbugs. I've seen my first man killed by a cannon-ball. Poor Page! Poor Ringgold! More of us are to go down to-morrow. Who will it be?"

Very possibly, the list of American slain would contain the announcement that a mere second lieutenant, named Ulysses S. Grant, had been struck by a chance shot from one of the Mexican batteries.

Chapter III.

The Fortune Of War

The morning of the 9th of May dawned brightly on the ocean and on the shore. There was a heavy sea running on the Gulf of Mexico, but the wind that was blowing was little more than a ten-knot breeze. Before this, at distances of a few miles from each other, a trio of armed vessels, representing three of the great powers of the world, were dashing along under full sail, as if they were in a hurry. They were so, for they all were searching hungrily after a double-flagged bark, which they had caught the day before, but which had managed to escape from them in the night. She had done it mysteriously and impudently. Instead of her, there now toiled along, away behind them, a dingy-looking Brazilian coffee schooner, the skipper of which did not conceal his satisfaction over the idea that he had unintentionally aided some other sailor--he did not care who--to get away from all those war-sharks. Well to the westward, with every sail spread that she could carry, the _Goshhawk_ sped along in apparent safety, but she was once more carrying the American flag, and Ned Crawford, busy below at his breakfast, felt a great deal easier in his patriotic mind. He could almost forget, for the moment, that he was taking a cargo of the worst kind of contraband of war goods to the armies of the enemies of his country. He was shortly on deck again, to be heartily greeted by Captain Kemp with:

"Hullo, my boy, where are all your ships of war?"

Ned took a long, sweeping glance around the horizon, and replied:

"It looks as if we'd lost 'em."

"We've done it!" chuckled the captain. "I think we'll not see any more of that lot. We made a fine run in the night, and we may be within three days' sail of Vera Cruz. But that depends a great deal on the wind and on our luck in keeping out of difficulties."

The captain turned away to his duties, and Ned went forward among the sailors. He could always manage to have good chats with them, and they were especially ready just now to discuss the war and their chances for running against more cruisers. Ned did not count as one of them exactly, but he was not to be looked down upon as a mere passenger. His father had sent him out as a kind of honorary supercargo, or ship's clerk, in the hope that he might learn something which would be of use to him when he should grow up into a full-sized merchant. Perhaps he had already found out a number of things upon which his father had not calculated when he said good-by to him. He was about to learn some other things which were not upon the ship's books, for he had reached the heel of the bowsprit, where Senor Zuroaga was standing, gazing dreamily westward.

"Good morning, senor!" said Ned. "We did get away."

"I don't know how good a morning it is for me," replied the dark-faced Mexican, wearily. "I may have only three or four days to wait before I shall know whether or not I am to be shot at Vera Cruz by order of his Excellency, President Paredes. My best chance is that he cannot know that I am coming. After I get ashore, my life may very soon depend upon his being beaten out of power by the armies of the United States."

"It couldn't be so in any other country," said Ned. "What have you ever done against him?"

"I won't say just now," replied the senor, "but he knows that I am his enemy. So I am of Santa Anna, if he is to get back. He murdered my father and confiscated our property in Oaxaca. Do you know where that is?"

"No," said Ned; "I don't know anything about the States of Mexico. It's hard enough to keep track of the United States. They make a new one every few weeks. They may have let in half a dozen while we've been at sea."

"No," said Zuroaga, "but they've tightened their grip on Texas, and I hope they'll hold on hard, if only to keep Paredes and Santa Anna from murdering all the best men in it. Well, Oaxaca lies due south of the State of Vera Cruz, and I can escape into it if I have half a chance. I'd be safe then, for I have plenty of friends there. We have owned huge tracts of land in Oaxaca ever since the Spaniards conquered Mexico."

"How did your folks get so much of it?" inquired Ned.

"I'll tell you," said the senor, proudly, and with a fiery flash in his coal-black eyes. "A man by the name of Hernando Cortes really conquered Mexico, without much help from the King of Spain. The king made a great deal of him for it, at first. He made him a marquis, which was a great thing in those days, whatever it is now. He also gave him a royal grant of some of the land he had won for Spain. This land was the valley of the Tehuantepec River, that empties into the Pacific Ocean near the eastern boundary of Oaxaca. So his title was Marquis del Valle, and his descendants hold a great deal of that land to this day. I am one of them,--one of the Marquisanas, as they call us. I am a direct descendant of Hernando Cortes, and that isn't all. One of my ancestors married an Aztec princess, and so I am also descended from the Montezumas, who were emperors of Mexico before the Spaniards came. I'm an Indian on one side, and I've more than one good reason for hating a Spaniard and a tyrant."

Ned Crawford had read the story of the conquest of Mexico, like a great many other American boys. That is, he had read it as if it had been a tip-top novel rather than a reality. He had admired Hernando Cortes, as a hero of fiction, but here he was, now, actually talking with one of the hero's great-great-grandchildren, who was also, after a fashion, one of the Montezumas. It was like a short chapter out of some other novel, with the night race of the _Goshhawk_ thrown in by way of variation. He was thinking about it, however, rather than asking questions, and the senor went on:

"It's a rich, beautiful country, all that eastern part of Oaxaca. There are splendid mountains and great forests of mahogany, rosewood, and pine. Through it runs the Coatzacoalcos River, northerly, to the gulf. Along the rivers and through the mountain passes, there is an old road that Cortes himself made to lead his little army across to the Pacific."

"I'd like to go over on it!" exclaimed Ned. "I guess I will, some day. I want to know all about Mexico."

He made up his mind, from what his companion went on to tell him, that there would be a great deal worth seeing, but at that time nobody was dreaming how many Americans, older and younger, were soon to travel over the old Cortes road. California was to be annexed, as well as Texas, and before Ned Crawford would be old enough to cast his first vote, there was to be a great tide of eager gold hunters pouring along what was called the Tehuantepec route to the placers and diggings.

The days of California gold mining had not yet come, and while Ned and the senor talked on about the terrible history of Mexico, with its factions, its bloody revenges, its pronunciamentos, and its fruitless revolutions, the _Goshhawk_ sailed swiftly along toward Vera Cruz and the powder-needing garrison of the castle of San Juan de Ulua.

Whether or not the war had actually begun was still a puzzling question in the mind of Captain Kemp, but he would have had no doubt whatever if he had been with General Taylor and his remarkable gathering of young students of the art of war. They all obtained several important lessons that day. One of these was that it is both difficult and dangerous for an advancing army to push on through dense bushes and high grass in hot weather, with Mexican lancers ready to pounce upon them among the lanes of the chaparral. It was found, not only before but after the short, sharp collision with the Mexican forces at Resaca de la Palma that a number of valuable lives had been lost in the bushy wilderness.

The American army moved slowly forward, and before nightfall the long lines of its blue uniforms went over the prairie rolls in full sight of the fort. The Stars and Stripes were still flying above the badly damaged ramparts, and cheer after cheer went up from thousands of throats, including those of the rescued garrison. They had not really lost many men, killed or wounded, but among the killed was their commander, Major Brown, after whom the fort was now named. In later years, a town grew up around the site of the frontier fortress, and it is called Brownsville. General Taylor's men had triumphantly cut their way through the difficult twenty miles from the sea to the siege, but perhaps any individual hero among them might have safely quoted the wise remark of Lieutenant Grant, as he looked at the fort and recalled his exploits of the day.

"Well, after all," he said to himself, "I don't know but what the battle of Resaca de la Palma would have been won just as well if I had not been there."

Long years afterward, it was to be said of a number of other battles that they would not have been won just as well if he had not been there to win them, and the same would be equally true of several of his young companions, as inexperienced as himself, and as ignorant of the great things before them in the far future.

Their army went into camp near the fort; and the Mexican forces, for the greater part, were believed to have retreated across the Rio Grande.

It is said that after every storm there comes a calm, but it was not a pleasant calm in the neighborhood of the American camp. There were all the while strong parties of Mexican lancers hovering around in all directions, on the lookout for imprudent stragglers, and a sharp watch had to be kept to guard against sudden dashes at the outposts, for the "rancheros," as the Mexican horsemen were called, were both well-mounted and enterprising. There was yet another kind of calm of a curious character. General Taylor absolutely did not know what to do next, and he could not know until after he should hear from the President what the statesmen in Congress had decided. Beyond a doubt, war was going on right here, but there was a dispute as to the nature of it and as to what was to be done with it. The Mexican geographers claimed that the southern boundary of Texas, even if it had been legally annexed to the United States, was at the Nueces River, and that all their country south of that line was still their own. According to them, therefore, General Taylor's army was not in Texas at all, but in Mexico. On the other hand, the American geographers placed the boundary at the Rio Grande, many miles south of the Nueces, and claimed that the forces defeated by General Taylor had invaded the United States. If both parties were right, then it might have been said that all that land between the rivers did not belong to anybody until the title to it should be settled by a military court and gunpowder arguments. That was really the way in which it was finally settled, and there is now no more dispute about it. History tells us that so have all the great national land titles of the world been argued and determined.

There was what some people call a waiting spell, and all things on sea or land might be spoken of as feverishly quiet for a day or two. In the afternoon of the third day, however, there was a sort of change in the weather at one spot away out on the gulf. There was not a cloud in the sky, indeed, and the _Goshhawk_ was skimming along under full sail so steadily that part of her crew had nothing better to do than to lie around on the deck, and feel satisfied that the breeze was so very good. In the same manner, the American soldiers in the neighborhood of Fort Brown were lying around in and out of their tents, and wishing that they had more shade to protect them from the hot sun of Texas or Mexico, whichever it might be. At that hour, however, there arrived upon the _Goshhawk_ a bit of unexpected news which awakened everybody, for the man at the lookout announced, excitedly:

"Schooner under Mexican flag, sir! Well away to loo'ard. Looks as if she might come pretty nigh us."

"Just the thing I wanted!" shouted Captain Kemp, springing to his feet. "We'll bear away for her. Up with the British flag, too. She'd shy the Stars and Stripes. They wouldn't tell us what the news is, either."

Once more, therefore, the _Goshhawk_ became an Englishman, and her chase after the latest news did not have to be a long one. Not many minutes later, the two vessels were within hailing distance, and the stranger spoke first, in a tone of evident anxiety:

"What ship is that?"

"_Goshhawk_, from Liverpool to Vera Cruz, with supplies for the Castle of San Juan de Ulua. What ship is that?"

"Schooner _Tampico_, from Havana to Matamoras, with supplies for General Ampudia," came much more cheerfully back. "We had to run away from Matamoras in ballast to escape the gringos. Their cruisers are around like hawks. You won't get to Vera Cruz if they can help it."

Captain Kemp already knew something about the reckless ways of men-of-war, but he did not say so. He merely responded:

"Is that so? How about the war? We've no news at all."

"War?" shouted the Mexican skipper, triumphantly. "Why, there have been three great battles already. We have whipped the Americans! General Taylor is surrounded, and will have to surrender. So will the fort on the Rio Grande. We shall drive the gringos out of Texas. I did not know until now that you British were going to help us."

There could be no further conversation, for the _Goshhawk_ was sweeping on out of hearing, but Ned Crawford exclaimed, indignantly:

"Our army defeated? How can that be? I don't believe it!"

Everybody on deck could hear the captain when he laughingly responded:

"The victories were won in that fellow's head, most likely. He was on board his schooner at Matamoras, and he didn't see it done. All he knows is that the war is really begun. It takes a long time, men, to make either an American or a British army think of surrendering. We shall hear a good deal more about those battles one of these days. I'd like to read the newspaper reports, though, on both sides."

"They would be good fun," dryly remarked Senor Zuroaga. "There is nobody on earth that can win victories like a newspaper editor."

"Hullo!" suddenly exclaimed Ned. "Something's the matter with the captain! Did you hear that?"

There was quite enough to hear. A long, loud hail that came down from the rigging was followed by almost a yell from Captain Kemp.

"We're chased again!" he said. "Thank God, she's astern! Men, we're in for it! Now for Vera Cruz or a prison! I'm ready!"

Rapid orders went out, but hardly anything more could be done to increase the speed of the ship. In fact, the lookout must almost have taken it for granted that the strange sail away off yonder belonged to a United States cruiser. Very likely it did, but it would have to draw a good deal nearer before there could be any absolute certainty. In the meantime, all on board the _Goshhawk_ might attend to whatever duties they had, and discuss the remarkable tidings brought by the Mexican schooner. While doing so, they could hardly have guessed correctly what was doing and saying on board the other vessel which had caused their anxiety. She was, indeed, a man-of-war, and she had received from a returning army transport ship a whole lot of fresh news from General Taylor's army, by way of Point Isabel on the coast, where he had been encamped. Something like this had been shouted across the water by an enthusiastic officer of the transport:

"Awful fightin'! Half a dozen battles! Taylor's whipped the Greasers into smithereens! He's goin' to march right on into Mexico. I don't keer if Uncle Sam annexes the hull half-Spanish outfit. I'm goin' in for one o' them there big silver mines, if we do. Hurrah for Gineral Taylor!"

A chorus of ringing cheers had answered that, but here, also, there were men of experience ready to question the entire accuracy of such tremendous war news. The one thing, however, which was brought out clearly to the mind of a naval commander was his greatly increased duty of watchfulness to prevent any kind of munitions of war from reaching the Mexican ports. That was the reason why he was now following at his best speed what might after all prove to be an entirely innocent trader. He even went below to consider the matter, and it was a full hour later when the officer in charge of the deck came hastily down to tell him:

"Same fellow we chased before, sir. I've made him out. He's under British colors again. Are we to chase?"

"Chase, sir?" roared the captain. "Of course we must chase! We know what it means now. The old _Portsmouth_ must catch that rascal this time. I'll come on deck."

Just as good glasses as those on board of her had been watching her during that hour of swift sailing, and Captain Kemp was even now lowering his telescope with what sounded like a sigh of relief.

"Mate," he said, "it's the same sloop that followed us before. It makes me feel better. We know what's about the best she can do. If this wind holds, I think we can fetch Vera Cruz at nightfall. No one Yankee'd dare to follow us under the guns of San Juan de Ulua."

"I reckon not," slowly responded the mate of the _Goshhawk_, "but we don't need to get under that chap's bow-chasers, either."

"No," said Captain Kemp, "but I'll risk a shot or two."

Ned Crawford heard him, for he had been following him pretty closely, to know what was coming.

"I don't know," he was thinking, "how far one o' those cannon of hers'll carry. I don't believe, either, that they can hit a mark that is plunging along as we are. It'd be worse than shooting at a bird on the wing. Still, it's kind of awful to be shot at by our own people."

The sailors of the _Goshhawk_ were also thinking, and they were beginning to look at one another very doubtfully. Not only were they Americans, most of them, but they had not shipped for any such business as this, and they did not fancy the idea of being killed for nothing. Moreover, Ned himself heard one of them muttering:

"There's an ugly look to this thing. If a shot from that cruiser were to strike us amidships, we'd all be blown into the air."

Decidedly that was not a pleasant thing to think of. Neither was there any great amount of comfort in a suggestion made by another of the men:

"Well, we'd never know what hurt us. We must keep out o' range."

Not long afterward there was a flash at one of the bow-ports of the cruiser. The report which followed was a peremptory order to heave to, under penalty of consequences. The gun was shotted, and a great many eyes watched anxiously for the dipping of that well-aimed ball of iron. It skipped from crest to crest of several waves before it sank, and then Captain Kemp shouted:

"All right, men! Half a mile short! We shall get there. The coast's in full sight now, and we've less than five miles to run."

"Ay, ay, sir!" came back from them, half cheerfully, but one voice was heard to grumble:

"It's all right, is it? Well, if it wasn't for that half-mile o' shortage, there'd be a mutinee-e on board o' this ship. I'd start it. I ain't a-goin' to get myself knocked on the head by Uncle Sam's own men."

There would very likely have been a mutiny, even as it was, if there had now been time for it to take shape. Thus far, the excitement of the chase had been in the captain's favor, but the seamen would have been legally justified in resisting him and bringing the ship to. His authority would have ceased, for he had no right to compel them to break the law or to run the risk of a broadside from a man-of-war.

Nearer, nearer, nearer, came both the dim outline of the Mexican coast and the white sails of the pursuing _Portsmouth_. Louder and more ominous grew the but half-suppressed murmurs of the sailors, but Captain Kemp's face was now wearing a hard, set look, and he was known to be a dangerous man to deal with. Something, which looked like the handle of a pistol, stuck out of one of his side pockets, and his fingers wandered to it now and then, as if he might be turning over in his mind the possibility of soon having to shoot a mutineer. Ned was staring anxiously back at the Yankee cruiser at the moment when his shoulder was gripped hard, and Senor Zuroaga almost whirled him around, exclaiming:

"Look! Look yonder! That's the Castle of San Juan de Ulua! Oh, but don't I wish it were a half-mile nearer! Hear that firing?"

The guns of the _Portsmouth_ were indeed sounding at regular intervals, and she was evidently almost within range. She was also, however, well within the prescribed distance line which a hostile cruiser may not pass without being regarded as making the attack herself. Beyond a doubt, too, there must have been observers at the fort, who were already watching the operations of the two approaching vessels. Minutes passed, which were counted by Ned with a heart that beat so he almost thought he could hear it.

"I think we are safe now," began the senor, but he had been looking at the fort, and there was one important fact of which he was not aware.

Only a couple of minutes earlier, the captain of the _Portsmouth_ had shouted angrily to his first lieutenant:

"No, sir! I will not let her get away. I will take her or sink her! Out with that starboard battery, and let them have it!"

Around swung the sloop, like the perfect naval machine that she was, and there quickly followed the reports of several guns at once. It was not a full broadside, but there was enough of it to have sunk the _Goshhawk_, if the iron thrown had struck her at or near the water-line. None of it did so, but the next exclamation of Senor Zuroaga was one of utter dismay, for the foremast of the bark had been cut off at the cap and there was a vast rent in her mainsail. Down tumbled a mass of spars and rigging, forward, and the ship could no longer obey her helm.

"All hands cut away wreckage!" shouted Captain Kemp. "We're all right. She won't dare come any nearer. Hurrah!"

It was a deep, thunderous roar from the castle which had called out that apparently untimely hurrah. It was the voice of a 64-pounder gun from the nearest rampart, and the shot it sent fell within ten feet of the _Portsmouth's_ bows.

"Hullo!" exclaimed her captain, more angrily than ever. "We've run in almost to pointblank range of those heavy guns. About! About! Lieutenant, we must get out of this."

"All right, sir," was anxiously responded. "It isn't worth while to risk any more shot of that size--not for all there's likely to be under the hatches of that wretched bark. I think we barked her, anyhow."

He may have meant that for a kind of small joke, but she had been worse hurt than he could know, for one 32-pounder shot had shattered her stern, barely missing her sternpost and rudder gearing, and she was no longer the trim and seaworthy vessel that she had been. One more heavy gun had sounded from the seaward battery of the castle, but her garrison had been in a genuinely Mexican condition of unreadiness, and it was several minutes before they could bring up more ammunition and make further use of their really excellent artillery. During those minutes, the _Portsmouth_ had ample opportunity given her to swing around and sweep swiftly out of danger. She had barely escaped paying dearly for her pursuit of the _Goshawk._ Her satisfaction, however, consisted only in part of the damage she had done to the bark, for, in getting around, she had let drive her entire larboard broadside. It was a waste of ammunition, certainly, but no Yankee man-of-war commander would ever have forgiven himself if he had failed to make a good reply to a shot from the Castle of San Juan de Ulua. Moreover, the sloop's gunners were ready to swear solemnly that every ball they had sent had hit the fort.

The excitement on board the _Goshhawk_ had been at fever heat, but it was now diminishing rapidly, for she did not contain a man who was not well pleased to see the _Portsmouth_ give the matter up. All signs of mutiny disappeared, of course, for there was no more duty of a military character to be required of the men. The bark was soon set free of her wreckage, and prepared to make her way in still further, under the protection of the fort batteries. Captain Kemp was too busy for any kind of conversation, and Senor Zuroaga came aft, to where Ned was curiously studying the work of the 32-pound shot at the stern. The senor leaned over the side and did the same for a long moment before he remarked:

"We have had a narrow escape. A few feet lower, and that shot would have let the water in. Fifty feet forward, and it would have touched off the gunpowder. As it is, our voyage is ended, and I shall know, in an hour or two, whether or not I am to be shot in the morning."

Chapter IV.

Completely Stranded

"There don't seem to be any Mexican warships in the harbor," said Ned to the senor, as they looked landward from the deck of their badly mauled bark. "There isn't one in sight to come out after that sloop."

"There are two good reasons for it," growled the senor, gloomily. "One is that there isn't any harbor here. Nothing but an open roadstead, exposed to all the storms that come, so that to anchor off Vera Cruz is to run a fair chance of being wrecked. The other is that my unfortunate country has no navy. There isn't a Mexican vessel afloat that would care to go out after a Yankee man-of-war. We are not yet a nation, and I'm half-afraid we never will be. This war may do something for us. There they come! I shall know very soon now."

As he spoke, he pointed at several boats which were pulling out toward the _Goshawk._ Some of them appeared to come from the wharves of the city, but one, which was nearer, was evidently from the castle, and it was in this that the senor took the deepest interest. Besides its half-dozen of oarsmen, it contained a tall man in a gorgeous uniform, and it was only a minute or so before Zuroaga exclaimed:

"Yes, that is Colonel Guerra himself. I am glad he is all alone!"

The bark was now drifting pretty rapidly landward, under such canvas as she had left, and the _Portsmouth_ was safely out of range of the Mexican guns, which were throwing away an occasional shot at her. She had not been touched by one of them, and she had the honor of being the first United States ship to try her batteries upon the renowned old Spanish fortress. It was, indeed, a well-built fortification, and it carried many guns, most of which had been brought over long ago from the foundries of old Spain. It did not stand upon the main shore, but on an island about half a mile out, and it therefore seemed unassailable, except from the sea or by heavy siege-guns on the shore. It had been one of the last places surrendered when the Spanish government reluctantly gave up Mexico. From that day onward, in each of the successive revolutions, it had been a first object with each new tyrant of the nominal republic or empire to get control of the fortress, which dominated nearly all of the commerce of Mexico with the outer world. At the present time, it was commanded by an officer whom President Paredes believed that he could trust--or he would have shot him. This, of course, was the main reason for the dark doubts of Senor Zuroaga. On the other hand, it might be taken into account that any prominent Mexican officer, like Colonel Guerra, would be willing to strengthen himself for such political changes as were entirely likely to come. For the sake of old friendship and family ties, for instance, he might be even desirous of binding to his own interests a man who was known to have a large number of personal adherents in the important State of Oaxaca.

That very man stood aft upon the deck of the _Goshhawk_ when the boat of Colonel Guerra touched her side, but he did not at once come forward to extend a greeting. That ceremony was performed sufficiently well by Captain Kemp, and the responses of the castle commander were to the last degree enthusiastic. According to him, indeed, the fort could not have held out against a siege for a week without the powder in the hold of the bark. Therefore, it might be that not much of it was likely to be distributed among the other forces of Mexico. The captain had many things to say, but before long Colonel Guerra walked slowly aft without anybody following him. He may have merely desired to look over the side and examine the injuries inflicted by the shot of the _Portsmouth_, for that was the first thing he did, without so much as appearing to recognize any human being in the neighborhood. One of the two persons who were there, however, drew slowly near him, and, as he did so, he heard the colonel mutter, in a very low tone:

"My dear friend, you have done well to bring me the powder. Thank you for your devotion to me and to Santa Anna, but you are in deadly peril. The orders of Paredes are out against you. General Morales, whom Paredes trusts, will soon be here to supersede me, but he will really come to hold this place for our general when he returns from exile. Consider that I do not know that you are here, for my next in command is a spy on me. This ship will never put to sea again. The captain and crew will be cared for, but that gringo boy is not safe, now that there has been bloodshed on the Rio Grande. Take him with you to the house of your cousin, Colonel Tassara, in the lower part of the city. Then get away to Oaxaca as soon as you can. President Paredes is still in the city of Mexico, and he will not go to take command of the army in the north for some time. You and I believe, of course, that he is really gathering it to have it led by our one-legged hero, Santa Anna. Paredes, however, suspects that a revolution is springing up under him, and he is watching for it. Of course, for that reason, he would shoot you at once as a returned conspirator against him. As for that matter, be careful how you land, for there are many spies. No doubt you can go where you please, after you get back among your own people. Farewell, but do not speak to me."

He turned and strolled carelessly away, and the senor bowed his head for a moment, as if in deep thought, while Ned Crawford was aware of an entirely new idea, which had crept into his mind as he had listened to the warning utterances of Colonel Guerra.

"I declare!" he said to himself, "he believes that Senor Zuroaga brought the powder, and he didn't. He believes that the senor is going in for old Santa Anna, and he isn't. He believes that the senor and I are enemies of Paredes, and so we are. I am! I hope that he'll be beaten out of his boots by General Taylor, and then upset by the new revolution. I guess he's right, though, about this ship, and I must find out how I can send a letter home. I want father and mother to know all about this business. Go ashore and hide? I'm ready for that, but I'd like to get a good look at the old city somehow."

Ned had been laboring under many perplexities and a great deal of depression of spirits during several days, but now he felt a kind of exhilarating fever creeping all over him, and at first he did not know exactly what it might be. When his father had taken him with him across the Atlantic,--it seemed so long ago now,--he had gone eagerly enough, and he had had a grand time looking at Liverpool and London. It had been a rare treat for a youngster who had but recently passed up from a grammar school into the counting-room of a New York shipping-house. After that, when he had been sent on this trip, to make his voyage home by way of Mexico, he had considered himself exceedingly lucky. But what was all that in comparison with this in the way of strange and wild adventure? Why, he had sailed through a naval engagement, cannonading and all, and right on out of that into a full-grown war and a half-grown revolution. The thrill which went over him was, therefore, the adventure fever. Something like this fever, in the veins of all sorts of men, young and old, has made the world what it is, discovering its new countries, its new sciences, its new institutions, and leading it forward and upward out of its old-time dullness and barbarism. So Ned stood straighter and felt older and had a pair of very brave, bright eyes when he walked forward to try and have a few words with Captain Kemp.

"Captain," he asked, "when can I go ashore?"

"Not quite yet," said the captain. "Don't bother me now. Of course, the ammunition for the castle goes out first. Then all the rest of the cargo must go ashore as fast as it can, and you are bound to attend to that. I'm glad that all of it is apparently on English account, and not for the American part of the concern. That makes all things easy. I hardly know what to do with the ship, though. We can't repair her here."

That was evidently the disadvantage of having a vessel get out of order in a place where there were no good dockyards. As for the unlading, there were already "lighter" barges on their way from the fort, and others, no doubt, would soon be on hand from the city. Haste was the main object, under the circumstances, and the entire work would be rapidly accomplished.

Zuroaga went below, and Ned followed him, for there was nothing more that he could do on deck just then.

"Senor," he asked, as soon as they were in the cabin, "how can I send a letter home? I don't know exactly what to say, either."

"Say anything you please," replied the senor. "Your letter will go by the mail of the English consul, and the mails for England will not be meddled with by the Mexican authorities."

"I'll sit right down and begin one," said Ned, but the senor interrupted him very soberly with:

"One word before you begin, please. I know you overheard what Colonel Guerra said to me. You and I must get on shore as soon as we can, and it will not do for either of us to remain in Vera Cruz. I have decided that I must take you with me to Oaxaca."

"Well," hesitated Ned, "I understand that you must go, but what am I in danger of if I should stay here?"

"Edward, my dear fellow," said the senor, "I will tell you, and you had better put it into your letter. First, you just wait and see what becomes of the _Goshhawk_. She will never sail out of the Gulf of Mexico again. The captain and crew will get away as best they can, and I can't tell how long it will be before they can do it. Meantime, you would be around on shore, and you would be known for a Yankee, a gringo. That might mean danger for you from any evil-minded Mexican. Some of this coast population are worse than savages, and they all carry knives. You'd never know who hurt you."

"That's awful!" exclaimed Ned. "I never thought of that."

"There is another reason," calmly continued the senor, "for your not lingering down here in the _tierra caliente_--the hot country--any later in the season. It is the yellow fever, and that is pretty sure to show itself before long. It takes people from the north quicker, a good deal, than it does those who were born here. I have even heard that there is a rumor of some cases occurring already. Your father is an old friend of mine, and he would never forgive me if I were to permit you to be exposed to it, when you can so easily get away into the uplands, where it is never heard of. Be a good clerk now, and attend to your cargo, and be glad that it hasn't been sent to the bottom of the gulf."

Ned had been thinking of that pretty seriously, and he sat down to write his home letter, well pleased that he had nothing to do with the unloading of the contraband of war part of the cargo. With reference to that, moreover, he had learned from Zuroaga that a Mexican post-commander of the rank of Colonel Guerra was a kind of local military dictator. Only so much of the ammunition as he might see fit to send would ever find its way into any other hands than his own. The senor had added that it was almost the same with whatever customs duties were collected by the civil officers of the port, with the one drawback that a dishonest army collector, if discovered, might possibly get himself shot as a kind of supposable revolutionist, stealing the profits of the others.

The lighter barges were now swarming around the bark, and a hundred busy workmen were doing their best, quite patriotically, for the guns and gunners of the castle. It was easy to see that the American sailors did not fancy that job, and were willing to keep out of it. So they sauntered around, attending to a few ship's duties here and there, while now and then one or another of them might have been heard to grumble his unwillingness to ever again go to sea under an English captain. The truth was that they had excellent reasons for discontent concerning the scrape into which they had been led, and they were well aware that they had not yet by any means seen the end of it. Almost the best they could hope for was that they were to be sent back to some country of Europe, on some ship or other which had not yet arrived at Vera Cruz, and which might not sail away with them on board for a number of weeks to come. Any man among them was now almost willing to have had the _Portsmouth_ sink the _Goshhawk_.

Heavy shot may be craned over into boats, and kegs or barrels of gunpowder may be let down tenderly, gently, as well by moonlight and lantern-light as by any other. Therefore, the coming on of night did not interfere with the landing processes. Moreover, any amount of sleep may be performed by a healthy boy in a battered ship lying safely at anchor. So Ned made up, more or less, for the sleep he had lost during the long race of the _Goshhawk_, and it was not early when he came on deck the next morning. When he did so, he found his duties as nominal supercargo cut out for him, and Captain Kemp appeared to be especially anxious that a son of one of the owners should supervise whatever was to be done with the peaceable part of his cargo. He even explained to Ned that he might yet be called upon in some law court to testify to the honest accuracy of all the papers he was now to sign.

"It'll take about two days more," he told him, "and you mustn't go ashore till the ship's empty. The American consul hasn't taken his passports yet, but he expects to get away soon, somehow or other. Most likely, he'll be taken off by a ship of war. So, perhaps, will other Americans. You might wait and get away then, if you think best, but you can't hope to ever go on this ship."

Ned had an increasingly strong feeling that he did not now care to go on that or any other craft of war or peace. He would much rather go to Oaxaca than to New York, and he felt more sure than ever that his father would not wish him to run any risk of the dreadful yellow fever. So he worked on industriously, learning a great deal concerning the processes required in getting a cargo out of a ship. During several hours, he was so occupied that he almost forgot the existence of his Mexican friend, but he was dimly aware that a small rowboat had come to the off-shore side of the ship, and had shortly pulled away without any interference on the part of the officials, military or civil. Perhaps she was understood to have come there by order of Colonel Guerra. Toward nightfall, however, that boat came again, as she did before, not running in among the barges, but seeming to avoid them. There were five men in her, and one of them stood up to say to a sailor at the rail:

"I wish to see young Senor Carfora. Is he on board?"

"Hullo!" thought Ned. "That's the Spanish name Senor Zuroaga told me I was to go by." Then he sang out aloud, as he hurried across the deck, "Here I am. What do you want of me?"

"Lean over and talk low," responded the man in the boat, but the one sailor near them did not understand a word of Spanish, and he might suppose, if he wished to do so, that it was something about the cargo. Ned himself listened eagerly, while the speaker went on: "I am Colonel Tassara. Senor Zuroaga must not come to the ship again. I will be here to-morrow evening. May I be assured that you will then be ready to come to my house?"

"Tell him of course you will!" said a voice behind Ned, peremptorily, and it was Captain Kemp who had come over for a few words with Tassara.

"I'll be ready, colonel," said Ned, when his turn came to speak, and the boat pulled away, leaving him and the captain by themselves.

"It's a good arrangement for you, my boy," said the captain. "Unless I am mistaken, though, there are signs of the worst kind of a northeasterly storm. This is a dangerous anchorage for that sort of thing. I don't think I shall risk having too many men on board when the norther gets here. The cargo will be all out, and the ship's well insured. The American consul doesn't know a thing about the ammunition or the running away from the cruisers. He has enough else on his hands just now."

Ned did not care a great deal about that, but he was more than ever in a hurry to see the end of his supercargo business. The fact was that an air of something like mystery appeared to be gathering around him, and there is a tremendous fascination in anything mysterious. What if he were now getting right in behind the war, after a fashion, and at the same time into the darkest kind of revolution or rebellion against the power of President Paredes, in company with that wonderful adventurer, General Santa Anna, and all the desperate characters of Mexico?

Chapter V.

The Work Of The Norther

During the rest of that day and the earlier part of the next the weather continued fairly good, and the unloading went steadily on. In the many intervals of his duties, Ned tried hard to drive his mental fever away, and amused himself as best he might. The city itself was worth looking at, with its tiers of streets rising one above another from the shore. He saw several churches, and some of them were large, with massive towers and steeples.

"The Mexicans must have been richer than they are now," he said to himself, "when those things were built. They cost piles of money."

He had no idea how rich a country it is, or how much richer it might be, if its wonderful natural resources were to be made the most of. As for the city, he had heard that Vera Cruz contained about seven or eight thousand people, besides its military garrison, its foreigners, and a continually varying mob of transient visitors from the interior. Zuroaga had told him, moreover, that it was from the latter that any gringo like himself would be in danger of violence. They were a vindictive, bloodthirsty class of men, most of them, for they retained undiminished the peculiar characteristics of their Indian ancestors.

"I don't care to run against any of them," thought Ned. "I don't like this _tierra caliente_ country, anyhow. It's too hot to live in."

Then he thought a great deal of the wonderful land of forests and mountains which lay beyond the fever-haunted lowlands, and he longed more and more for a good look at the empire which Hernando Cortes won from the old Montezumas and their bloody war-god, Huitzilopochtli.

In the afternoon of the second day the sky was manifestly putting on a threatening aspect. The wind began to rise and the sea began to roughen. The men discharging the cargo hastened their work, and it was evident that the last of the lighter barges would soon be setting out for the shore. Ned was staring at them and recalling all the yarns he had heard concerning the destructive power of a gulf "norther," when Captain Kemp came walking slowly toward him, with a face which appeared to express no sort of unusual concern for anything in the world. Nevertheless, he said:

"Get ready now, Ned, as sharp as you can. There comes your boat. I shall send some papers by the colonel. Senor Zuroaga's luggage all went on shore yesterday. I think some other men will have to be looking out for themselves before long. If the _Goshhawk_ should drag her anchors and go ashore, I hope there won't be too much sea running for good boats to live in."

"I'm all ready now!" exclaimed Ned, as he sprang away, but he went with a curious question rising in his mind: "What if a cable were more'n half cut through? Wouldn't it be likely to break and let go of an anchor, if it were pulled at too hard by a gale of wind? I don't really know anything about it, but Senor Zuroaga thinks that Captain Kemp is a curious man to deal with. Father thinks that he is a good sailor, too."

All the wardrobe that Ned had on board was easily contained in a waterproof satchel of moderate size, and he was half-glad now that there was no more of it, it went so quickly over into the large yawl that was waiting alongside when he returned on deck. It was a four-oared boat, and Colonel Tassara, at the stern, beckoned to him without speaking, as if he might have reasons for silence as well as haste.

"In with you, Ned," said Captain Kemp. "I'll try to see you within a day or two. Take good care of yourself. Good day, colonel."

The Mexican officer only bowed, and in a moment more the yawl was fighting her difficult way over the rapidly increasing waves, for the first strength of the norther had really come, and there might soon be a great deal more of it,--for the benefit of the _Goshhawk_.

"There!" muttered Captain Kemp, as he saw them depart, "I haven't more than a good boat's crew left on board. We'll take to the life-boat as soon as the cable parts. There isn't any use in trying to save this bark under all the circumstances. I've done my duty. I couldn't have calculated on heavy shot first, and then for a whole gang of cruisers watching for me off the coast. This 'ere norther, too! Well, I didn't make the war, and I don't see that I ought to lose any money by it. I won't, either."

Whatever was his exact meaning, the mate and four other men who remained evidently agreed with him, from what they were shortly saying to one another. It might also have been taken note of by a careful observer that the mate was a Scotchman, and that the four others were all from Liverpool. Whoever had put so much contraband of war on board the _Goshhawk_ had not entrusted it entirely to the eccentricities of a lot of out-and-out American sailors, with peculiar notions concerning their flag.

On went Colonel Tassara's yawl, and it was not likely to meet any other boat that evening. As the rollers increased in size momentarily, Ned began to have doubts as to whether such a boat had any reasonable hope of reaching the shore. It was now pitch-dark also, and he could but feel that his adventures in Mexico were beginning in a remarkably unpleasant manner. The landing could not have been made at any place along the beach, where the surf was breaking so dangerously, and it looked almost as perilous to approach the piers and wharves.

"How on earth are we to do it?" exclaimed Ned, in English, but no answer came from the hard-breathing rowers.

Colonel Tassara seemed now to be steering a southerly course, instead of directly landward, and Ned calculated that this would carry them past all of the usual landing-places. It also gave them narrow escapes from rolling over and over in the troughs between several high waves. On the whole, therefore, it was a pretty rough boating excursion, but it was not a long one. It did take them almost past the city front, and at last Ned thought he saw a long, black shadow reaching out at the boat. It was better than a shadow, for it was a long wooden pier, old enough to have been built by Cortes himself. The waves were breaking clean over it, but, at the same time, it was breaking them, so that around in the lee of it the water was less boisterous, and the yawl might reach the beach in safety. There was no wharf, but all Ned cared for was that he saw no surf, and he felt better than he had at any moment since leaving the _Goshhawk_. It was the same, for they said so, emphatically, with the boatmen and Colonel Tassara.

"One of the men will take your bag," said the colonel to Ned, as soon as they were out on shore. "We will go right along to my house, and we shall hardly meet anybody just now. I'm glad of that. Santa Maria, how dark it is getting! This will be the worst kind of norther."

A couple of lanterns had been taken from the boat. They had previously been lighted by the colonel with much difficulty, and without them it would have been impossible to follow the stony, grassy pathway by which Ned Crawford made his first invasion of the Mexican territory. He did not now feel like annexing any of it, although Mexican patriots asserted that their title to Vera Cruz or the city of Mexico itself was no better than their right to Texas. His gloomy march was a short one, and only a few shadowy, unrecognized human beings passed him on the way.

The party came to a halt before a one-story stone dwelling, with a long piazza in front of it, close to the weedy sidewalk of a crooked and straggling street. It was apparent that this was not in the aristocratic quarter of the city, if it had one. A door in the middle of the house swung open as they arrived, and the boatman who carried Ned's bag put it down on the threshold. The lanterns went away with him and his fellow rowers, but other lights made their appearance quickly,--after the door had closed behind Ned and Colonel Tassara. Not one of the boat's crew had obtained a peep into the house, or had seen any of its occupants. Ned was now aware that he had entered a broad hall-like passageway, which appeared to run through the house, and to have several doors on each side. One of these doors had opened to let the new light in, and through it also came Senor Zuroaga, two other men, and a young girl, who at once threw her arms around the neck of Colonel Tassara.

"O father!" she exclaimed, "I am so glad! Mother and I were so frightened! We were afraid you would be drowned."

"My dear little daughter," he responded, sadly, "I fear there will be more than one lot of poor fellows drowned to-night. This storm is fearful!"

It seemed, in fact, to be getting worse every minute, and Ned was thinking of the _Goshhawk_ and the state of her cable, even while he was being introduced to the pretty Senorita Felicia Tassara, and then to her mother, a stately woman, who came to meet her husband without condescending to say how badly she had been alarmed on his account.

"She's just about the proudest-looking woman I ever saw," thought Ned, for, although she welcomed him politely, she at once made him aware that she did not consider him of any importance whatever. He was only a young gringo, from nobody knew where, and she was a Mexican lady of high rank, who hated Americans of all sorts.

Ned's only really hearty greeting came from Senor Zuroaga, who seemed to him, under the circumstances, like an old friend.

"Carfora, my dear fellow," he said, "you and the colonel must come in to your supper----"

"Why, senor," expostulated Ned, "I'm wet through, and so is he."

"I declare!" exclaimed Zuroaga. "What's in my head that I should overlook that? You must change your rig. Come this way with me."

Ned followed him, bag in hand, through a narrow passage which opened at the right, and they went on almost to the end of it. The room which they then entered was only seven feet wide, but it was three times as long, and it was oddly furnished. Instead of a bedstead, a handsome hammock, with blankets, sheets, and a pillow in it, hung at one side, and the high window was provided with mosquito nettings. There was no carpet on the floor, but this was clean, and a good enough dressing-bureau stood at the further end of the room. Before the mirror of this, the senor set down the lamp he had been carrying, and said to Ned:

"My dear Carfora, I have explained to the haughty senora that you are the son of an American merchant, and of a good family, so that she will not really treat you like a common person. She is descended from the oldest families of Spain, and there is no republicanism in her. The sooner you are ready, the better. I will be back in five minutes."

Open came the bag, but the best Ned could do in the way of style was a very neat blue suit. What he would have called the swallow-tails, which Senora Tassara might have expected as the dinner dress of a more important guest, could hardly be required of a young fellow just escaped from a norther. As soon as he felt that he had done his best, he turned toward the door, but it opened to let in Senor Zuroaga in full regulation dinner costume. How he could have put it on so quickly puzzled Ned, but he asked no questions. It was quite possible, however, that even the descendant of Cortes and the Montezumas was a little bit in awe of the matronly descendant of the ancient Spanish grandees. She might be a powerful personage in more ways than one. At all events, Ned was led out to the central hall and across it, to where an uncommonly wide door stood open, letting out a flood of illumination.

"Walk in, senors," said Colonel Tassara, from just inside this portal, and the next moment Ned was altogether astonished.

He had been impressed, on reaching this house, that it was an old and even dingy affair, of no considerable size, but he did not yet know that the older Spanish mansions were often built with only one story and around a central courtyard. Moreover, at least in Mexico, they were apt to show few windows in front, and to be well calculated for use as a kind of small forts, if revolutionary or similar occasions should ask for thick walls, with embrasures for musketry. One glance around Senora Tassara's dining-room was enough to work a revolution in Ned's ideas relating to that establishment. It was large, high-ceilinged, and its carpetless floor was of polished mahogany. The walls and ceiling were of brilliant white stucco. Upon the former were hung several trophies of weapons and antlers of deer. In the centre, at the right, in a kind of ornamental shrine, was an ivory and ebony crucifix, which was itself a priceless work of art. The long dining-table had no cloth to conceal the fact that it was of the richest mahogany, dark with age and polished like a mirror. On the table was an abundance of fine china ware, none of it of modern manufacture, but all the more valuable for that reason. At the end nearest Ned stood a massive silver coffee-urn, beautifully molded, and it was not wonderful that he stood still a moment to stare at it, for it had taken him altogether by surprise.

Almost instantly a change came over the dark, handsome features of Senora Tassara. She smiled brightly, for Ned's undisguised admiration of that mass of silver had touched her upon a tender spot, and she now spoke to him with at least four times as much cordiality as she had shown him in the hall.

"Ah, my young friend," she said, turning gracefully toward him, "so you are pleased with my coffee-urn? No table in your city of New York can show anything like it. It is of the oldest Seville workmanship, and there are not many such remaining in all the world. It is an heirloom."

"Senor Carfora," at that moment interrupted Colonel Tassara, "I will show you something else that is worth more than any kind of silver ware. Take a good look at this!"

He stepped to a trophy of arms which hung upon the wall near him, and took from it a long, heavy sword, with a worn-looking but deeply chased gold hilt. He drew it from the sheath, gazing with evident pride at its curving blade of dull blue steel.

"I think you have never before seen a sword like that," he said. "It may have been made at Toledo, for all I know, but it is centuries old. It was won from a Moor by an ancestor of mine, at the taking of Granada, when the Moorish power was broken forever by the heroes of Spain. Who can tell? It may have come down from the days of the Cid Campeador himself."

Whoever that military gentleman may have been, Ned had no idea, but he determined to find out some day, and just now he was glad to grasp the golden hilt, and remember all that he had ever heard about the Moors. He had not at all expected to hear of them again, just after escaping from a norther in the Gulf of Mexico, but, without being aware of it, he was learning a great deal about the old Spanish-Mexican aristocracy, and why it could not easily become truly republican, even in the New World, which is beginning to grow old on its own account.

Dinner was now ready, and Ned voted it a prime good one, for it consisted mainly of chicken, with capital corn-cakes and coffee. It was a tremendous improvement upon the dinners he had been eating at sea, cooked in the peculiar style of the caboose of the _Goshhawk_.

One large idea was becoming firmly fixed in the acute mind of the young adventurer, and it tended to make him both watchful and silent. Not only was he in a country which was at war with his own, but he was in a land where men were apt to be more or less suspicious of each other. It was also quite the correct thing in good manners for him to say but little, and he was the better able to hear what the others were saying. Therefore, he could hardly help taking note that none of the party at the dinner-table said anything about the powder on the _Goshhawk_, or concerning a possible trip to be made to Oaxaca by any one there. They all appeared ready, on the other hand, to praise the patriotism, statesmanship, and military genius of that truly great man, President Paredes. They made no mention whatever of General Santa Anna, but they spoke confidently of the certainty with which Generals Ampudia and Arista were about to crush the invading gringos at the north, under Taylor. They also were sure that these first victories were to be followed by greater ones, which would be gained by the President himself, as soon as he should be able to take command of the Mexican armies in person. If any friend of his, a servant, for instance, of the Tassara family, had been listening, he would have had nothing to report which would have made any other man suppose that the rulers of Mexico had bitter, revengeful foes under that hospitable roof.

The dinner ended, and Ned was once more in his room, glad enough to get into his hammock and go to sleep. If the norther did any howling around that house, he did not hear it, but he may have missed the swing motion which a hammock obtains on board a ship at sea. His eyes closed just as he was thinking:

"This is great, but I wonder what on earth is going to happen to me to-morrow."

Chapter VI.

Forward, March

The sun of the next morning arose upon a great deal of doubt and uncertainty in many places. Some of the soldiers of General Taylor's army were altogether uncertain into what bushes of the neighboring chaparral the norther had blown their tents, and they went out in search of their missing cotton duck shelters. The entire force encamped at the Rio Grande border was in the dark as to what it might next be ordered to do, and all sorts of rumors went around from regiment to regiment, as if the rumor manufacturer had gone crazy. General Taylor himself was sure of at least the one point, that he had no right to cross the muddy river in front of him and make a raid into Mexico until he should hear again from the government at Washington, and be officially informed that the war, which he was carrying on so well, had really begun. He and all his army believed that it was already going on, and they grumbled discontentedly that they were compelled to remain in camp, and watch for ranchero lancers on Texan soil, if it was legally Texan at all, until permission arrived to strike their tents and march forward.

The news of the fighting and of what were described as the great battles on the Mexican border had reached New Orleans and Key West. It was travelling northward at full speed, but it had not yet been heard by the government or by the people of the North and West. None of these had as yet so much as imagined what a telegraphic news-bringer might be, and so they could not even wish that they had one, or they would surely have done so. The uncertainties of that morning, therefore, hampered all the councils of the nation. Almost everybody believed that there would soon be a war, although a great many men were strongly opposed to the idea of having one. Taking the war for granted, however, there were doubts and differences of opinion among both military and unmilitary men as to how it was to be carried on. Some were opposed to anything more than a defence of the Rio Grande boundary-line, but these moderate persons were hooted at by the out-and-out war party, whom nothing promised to satisfy but an invasion which intended the capture of the city of Mexico. Nothing less than this, they said, would obtain the objects of the war, and secure a permanent peace at the end of it. Then, supposing such an invasion to be decided on, an important question arose as to how and where the Mexican territory might best be entered by a conquering army. Many declared that General Taylor's forces were already at the right place for pushing ahead, but the commander-in-chief, General Winfield Scott, by all odds the best general the country possessed, responded that the march proposed for Taylor was too long, too difficult, and that it was likely to result in disaster. The shorter and only practicable route, he asserted, was by way of the sea and Vera Cruz. He was also known to be politically opposed to any war whatever. Thereupon, a number of prominent men, who disagreed with him, set themselves at work to have him removed or put aside, that a commander might take his place who was not so absurdly under the influence of military science, common sense, and of the troubles which might be encountered in marching seven hundred miles or more through an enemy's country. There were, it was said, eloquent politicians, who did not know how to drill an "awkward squad," but who felt sure of their ability to beat Old Scott in such an agreeable affair as a military picnic party to the city of Mexico.

The young military scholars in the camp near Fort Brown were ignorant of all this. They were satisfied with their present commander, as well they might be, for he was a good one. They were satisfied with themselves, and were enthusiastically ready to fight anything which should be put in front of them. They were dreadfully dissatisfied with camp life, however, and especially with the fact that they and all the other raw troops of that army were forced to undergo a great deal of drill and discipline in hot weather. Perhaps, if this had not been given them, they would hardly have rendered so good an account of themselves in the severe tests of soldiership which they underwent a few months later.

The first doubt that came to Ned Crawford that morning, as his eyes opened and he began to get about half-awake, related to his hammock and to how on earth he happened to be in it. Swift memories followed then of the norther, the perilous pull ashore, the arrival at the Tassara place, and the people he had met there. He recalled also something about silver coffee-urns and Moorish warriors, but the next thing, he was out upon the floor, and his head seemed to buzz like a beehive with inquiries concerning his immediate future.

"Here I am," he said aloud. "I'm in Mexico; in Vera Cruz; at this house with Senor Zuroaga; and I don't know yet what's become of the _Goshhawk_. I don't really ever expect to see her again, but I hope that Captain Kemp and the sailors didn't get themselves drowned. I must see about that, first thing. Then I suppose I must see the American consul, write another letter home, see the merchants our goods were delivered to,--and what I'm to do after that I don't know."

There was a loud rap at his door just then, and in a moment more he was almost repeating that speech to Senor Zuroaga.

"Please say very little to Colonel Tassara or anybody else in this house," replied the senor, emphatically. "Get used, as soon as you can, to being called Carfora. We must make you look like a young Mexican right away. I've bought a rig which will fit you. It is well that you are so dark-complexioned. A red-haired fellow would never pass as you will. All the American residents of Vera Cruz are already under military protection, and I am glad there are so few of them, for there are said to have been two or three assassinations. Part of the mountain men who are loafing in town just now are wild Indians, as reckless and cruel as any of your Sioux warriors on a war-path. Come along to breakfast. You won't meet the ladies this time, but I believe the senora and senorita like you a little, because you had the good taste to admire their silver and china."

"Oh, that old coffee-urn!" said Ned. "Well, it's as fine as anything I ever saw, even in a jewelry window."

"Yes," laughed the senor, "but the senora wants to have the American consul killed because he told her she had better have that thing melted and made over into one of the modern patterns. She will never forgive him. Tell her again, when you have a chance, that the old-time Seville silversmiths could beat anything we have nowadays, and she will love you. I do not really believe myself that we are getting much ahead of those ancient artists. They were wonderful designers."

Ned was willing to believe that they were, and he made up his mind to praise Senora Tassara's pet urn to the best of his ability.

He was not to have an opportunity for doing so immediately. Their breakfast was ready for them in the dining-room, but they were allowed to eat it by themselves. It seemed to Ned a very good one, but several times he found himself turning away from it to stare at the silver marvel and at the weapons on the walls. There was no apparent reason for haste, but neither of them cared to linger, and before long they were out on the piazza in front, Zuroaga with his hat pulled down to his eyes and his coat collar up. Ned was at once confirmed in his previous idea that the house was anything but new, and to that he added the conviction that it was much larger than it had appeared to be in the night. He believed, too, that it must have cost a deal of money to build it long ago. He had only a moment for that calculation, however, for his next glance went out toward the gulf, and he came near to being astonished. The path which he had followed in coming up from the shore had been a steep one, and he was now standing at a place from which he had a pretty good view of the tossing water between the mainland and the castle of San Juan de Ulua. The old fortress was there, unharmed by the norther, but not in any direction, as far as his eyes could reach, was there any sign of a ship, at anchor or otherwise.

"Senor!" he exclaimed. "What has become of them? They are all gone! Do you suppose they have been wrecked?"

"Not all of them, by any means," replied the senor, but he also was searching the sea with a serious face. "As many as could lift their anchors in time to make a good offing before the norther came were sure to do so. If there were any that did not succeed, I can't say where they may have gone to just now."

"The _Goshhawk_--" began Ned, but the senor gripped his arm hard, while he raised his right hand and pointed up the road.

"Silence!" he commanded, in a sharp whisper. "Look! there he comes. Don't even call him by his name. Wait and hear what he has to say. He can tell us what has become of the bark. They are a used-up lot of men."

So they were, the five who now came walking slowly along from somewhere or other on the coast upon which the disastrous storm had blown.

"Captain Kemp and the crew of his life-boat," thought Ned, but he obeyed the senor at first, and was silent until the haggard-looking party arrived and came to a halt in front of him. Then, however, he lost his prudence for a moment, and anxiously inquired:

"Were any of you drowned?"

"Not any of us that are here," responded the captain, grimly. "No, nor any other of the _Goshhawk_ men, but there are more wrecks in sight below, and I don't know how many from them got ashore. Our bark stranded this side of them, and she's gone all to pieces. We took to the life-boat in time, but we've had a hard pull of it. We went ashore through the breakers, about six miles below this, and here we are, but I don't want to ever pass such another night. I'm going on down to the consul's now, to report, and Ned had better be there as soon as he can. Then, the sooner he's out o' Vera Cruz, the better for him and all of us."

"I think so myself," said Senor Zuroaga. "Don't even stay here for breakfast. Nobody from here must come to the consul's with Senor Carfora."

"Of course not," said the captain, wearily, and away he went, although Ned felt as if he were full to bursting with the most interesting kind of questions concerning the captain's night in the life-boat and the sad fate of the swift and beautiful _Goshhawk_.

"Come into the house," said the senor, "and put on your Mexican rig. I have a message from Colonel Guerra that we must get away to-night. I must not bring any peril upon the Tassara family. Up to this hour no enemy knows that I was a passenger on the powder-boat, as they call it."

"All right," said Ned. "I'll write one more letter home. I couldn't get out of the city in any other way just now, and I want to see Mexico."

That idea was growing upon him rapidly, but his next errand was to the senor's own room, to put on what he called his disguise. He followed his friend to a large, handsome chamber in the further end of the house, and, as he entered it, his first thought was:

"Hullo! are they getting ready for a fight?"

In the corners of the room and leaning against the walls here and there were weapons enough to have armed half a company of militia, if the soldiers did not care what kinds of weapons they were to carry, for the guns and swords and pistols were of all patterns except those of the present day. Ned saw at least one rusty firelock, which put him in mind of pictures he had seen of the curious affairs the New England fathers carried when they went to meeting on Sunday. He had no time to examine them, however, for here were his new clothes, and he must be in them without delay. He admired each piece, as he put it on, and then one look into the senor's mirror convinced him that he was completely disguised. He had been turned into a somewhat stylish young Mexican, from his broad-brimmed straw hat to his Vera Cruz made shoes. He still wore a blue jacket, but this one was short, round-cornered, and had bright silver buttons. His new trousers were wide at the bottoms, with silver-buttoned slashes on the outsides below the knees. He had not worn suspenders on shipboard, but now his belt was of yellow leather and needlessly wide, with a bright buckle and a sword-catch on the left side. As to this matter, the senor showed him a short, straight, wide-bladed sort of cutlas, which he called a machete.

"That is to be yours," he said. "You need not carry it in town, but you will as soon as we get away. You will have pistols, too, and a gun. It won't do to go up the road to Oaxaca unarmed. Now you may make the best of your way to the consul's, and I'll stay here to finish getting ready."

He appeared to be laboring under a good deal of excitement, and so, to tell the truth, was the disguised young American. Out he went into the hall, trying hard to be entirely collected and self-possessed, but it was only to be suddenly halted. Before him stood the stately Senora Tassara, and clinging to her was the very pretty Senorita Felicia, both of them staring, open-eyed, at the change in his uniform. The senorita was of about fourteen, somewhat pale, with large, brilliant black eyes, and she was a very frank, truthful girl, for she exclaimed:

"Oh, mother, do look at him! But it does not make a Mexican of him. He's a gringo, and he would fight us if he had a chance. I want them all to be killed!"

"No, my dear," said the senora, with a pleasant laugh. "Senor Carfora will not fight us. He and his ship brought powder for Colonel Guerra and the army. I am sorry he must leave us. You must shake hands with him."

"Oh, no!" said the wilful Felicia, spitefully. "I don't want to shake hands with him. He is one of our enemies."

"No, I'm not!" stammered Ned. "But did you know that our ship was wrecked in the norther? If you had been on board of her when she went ashore, you would have been drowned. The men in the life-boat had a hard time in getting ashore. I'm glad you were at home."

"There, dear," said her mother. "That is polite. You heard what Senor Zuroaga said about the wrecks. They were terrible! Can you not say that you are glad Senor Carfora was not drowned?"

"No, mother," persisted Felicia. "I'll say I wish he had been drowned, if--if he could have swum ashore afterward. Good enough for him."

Senora Tassara laughed merrily, as she responded:

"You are a dreadfully obstinate young patriot, my darling. But you must be a little more gracious. The gringo armies will never come to Vera Cruz. They are away up north on the Rio Grande."

"Well, mother, I will a little," said the senorita, proudly. "Senor Carfora, your generals will be beaten all to pieces. You wait till you see our soldiers. You haven't anything like them. They are as brave as lions. My father is a soldier, and he is to command a regiment. I wish I were a man to go and fight."

Her eyes were flashing and she looked very warlike, but the only thing that poor Ned could think of to say just then was:

"Senora Tassara, if you are not careful, somebody will get in some day and steal your beautiful coffee-urn."

"Ah me!" sighed the senora. "This has been attempted, my young friend. Thieves have been killed, too, in trying to carry off the Tassara plate. There would be more like it, in some places, if so much had not been made plunder of and melted up in our dreadful revolutions. Some of them were only great robberies. I understand that you must go to your business now, but we shall see you again this evening."

"Good morning, Senora Tassara," said Ned, as he bowed and tried to walk backward toward the outer door. "Good morning, Senorita Tassara. You would feel very badly this morning if you had been drowned last night."

The last thing he heard, as he reached the piazza, was a ringing peal of laughter from the senora, but he believed that he had answered politely.

He knew his way to the office of the American consul, and the distance was not great in so small a town, but as he drew near it, he saw that there was a strong guard of soldiers in front of the building. They were handsomely uniformed regulars from the garrison of San Juan de Ulua, and there was cause enough for their being on duty. All up and down the street were scattered groups of sullen-looking men, talking and gesticulating. None of them carried guns, but every man of them had a knife at his belt, and not a few of them were also armed with machetes of one form or another. They would have made a decidedly dangerous mob against anything but the well-drilled and fine-looking guards who were protecting the consulate. Ned remembered what Felicia had said about her soldiers, and he did not know how very different were these disciplined regulars from the great mass of the levies which were to be encountered by the troops of the United States. He was admiring them and he was thinking of battles and generals, when one of the most ferocious-looking members of the mob came jauntily sauntering along beside him. He was a powerfully built man, almost black with natural color and sunburn. He was not exactly ragged, but he was barefooted, and his broad-brimmed sombrero was by no means new. A heavy machete hung from his belt, and he appeared to be altogether an undesirable new acquaintance. Ned looked up at him almost nervously, for he did not at all like the aspect of affairs in that street. He was thinking:

"I guess they were right about the excitement of the people. This isn't any place for fellows like me. I must get out of Vera Cruz as soon as I can. It's a good thing that I'm disguised. I must play Mexican."

At that moment a good-natured smile spread across the gloomy face of his unexpected companion, and he said, in a low tone of voice:

"Say nothing, Senor Carfora. Walk on into the consulate. I belong to General Zuroaga. There are four more of his men here. We have orders to take care of you. You are the young Englishman that brought us the powder. There was not a pound to be bought in Vera Cruz, but some of those fellows would knife you for a gringo."

[Illustration: "WE HAVE ORDERS TO TAKE CARE OF YOU"]

Quite a useless number of queer Spanish oaths were sprinkled in among his remarks, but Ned did not mind them. He only nodded and strictly obeyed the injunction against talking, even while he was asking himself how on earth his friend, the senor, ever became a general. He concluded, for the moment, that it might be a kind of militia title, such as he had heard of in the United States. However that might be, he and his guide soon reached the door of the consulate, and he himself was promptly admitted, as if the keeper of the door had been expecting to see him. There were guards inside the house as well as in the street, and they motioned Ned on through a narrow entry-way, at the end of which was an open room. He passed on into this, and the next moment he was exclaiming:

"Hullo, Captain Kemp! I'm so glad you are here! What am I to do next?"

"Almost nothing at all," said the captain, quietly. "Just sign your papers and get away. The consul himself has gone to the city of Mexico, with United States government despatches for President Paredes, and we shall finish our business as easy as rolling off a log. You have nothing to do with the wrecking of the _Goshhawk_, for you weren't on board when she parted her cable. But just look at those people!"

Ned did so, for the room, a large and well-furnished office, was almost crowded with Americans of all sorts, mostly men, whose faces wore varied expressions of deep anxiety.

"What are they all here for?" asked Ned.

"Safety!" growled the captain. "And to inquire how and when they can find their way out of this city of robbers. I hear that a whole regiment is to be on guard duty to-night, and that the mob is to be put down. If I ever see your father again, I'll explain to him why I sent you away."

Before Ned could make any further remarks, he was introduced to the vice-consul, a dapper, smiling little man, who did not appear to be in the least disturbed by his unpleasant surroundings. Almost a score of papers, larger and smaller, required the signature of the young supercargo of the unfortunate _Goshhawk_. They were speedily signed, although without any clear idea in Ned's mind as to what they all were for, and then Captain Kemp took him by the arm and led him away into a corner of the room.

"Ned, my boy," he said, "you see how it is. You must keep away from the seacoast for awhile. After things are more settled, you can come back and get away on a British, or French, or Dutch vessel, if the port isn't too closely blockaded. Whether I shall get out alive or not, I don't know. You haven't enough money. I'll let you have a couple of hundred dollars more in Mexican gold. You'd better not let anybody suspect that you carry so much with you. This country contains too many patriots who would cut their own President's throat for a gold piece. Don't ever show more than one shiner at a time, or you may lose it all."

Ned took the two little bags that were so cautiously delivered to him, and while he was putting them away in the inner pockets of his jacket, his mind was giving him vivid pictures of the knives and machetes and their bearers, whom he had seen in the street.

"Captain," he said, "those fellows out there wouldn't wait for any gold. A silver dollar would buy one of them."

"Half a dollar," replied the captain. "Not one of them is worth a shilling. They ought all to be shot. But look here. I mustn't come to Colonel Tassara's place again. I find that he is under some kind of suspicion already, and President Paredes makes short work of men whom he suspects of plotting against him. Go! Get home!"

"That's just about what I'd like to do," said Ned to himself, as he hurried out of the consulate, but the next moment his courage began to come back to him, for here was Senor Zuroaga's ferocious-looking follower, and with him were four others, who might have been his cousins or his brothers, from their looks, for they all were Oaxaca Indians, of unmixed descent. Their tribe had faithfully served the children and grandchildren of Hernando Cortes, the Conquistador, from the day when he and his brave adventurers cut their way into the Tehuantepec valley.

Chapter VII.

The Land Of The Montezumas

"Father Crawford, do read that newspaper! The war has begun! They are fighting great battles on the Rio Grande! Oh, how I wish you hadn't sent Ned to Mexico! He may get killed!"

She was a woman of middle age, tall, fine-looking, and she was evidently much excited. She was standing at one end of a well-set breakfast table, and was holding out a printed sheet to a gentleman who had been looking down at his plate, as if he were asking serious questions of it.

"My dear," he said, as he took the paper, "I knew it was coming, but I didn't think it would come so soon as this. I don't really see that Ned is in any danger. Captain Kemp will take care of him."

"But," she said, "the _Goshhawk_ may be captured."

"No," replied Mr. Crawford, confidently. "She hasn't sailed across prairie to the Rio Grande. There won't be any fighting at Vera Cruz for ever so long. There can't be any on the sea, for Mexico has no navy. The _Goshhawk_ is entirely safe, and so is Ned. It'll be a grand experience for him."

"I don't want him to have so much experience at his age," she said, anxiously. "I'd rather he'd be at home,--if there's going to be a war."

"I've often wished that I could see a war," replied her husband, as he glanced over the black-typed headings of the newspaper columns. "I've travelled a good deal in Mexico, and I wanted Ned to learn all he could of that country. He will hardly have any chance to do so now."

"He might see too much of it if he were taken prisoner," she exclaimed. "I can't bear to think of it! Oh, how I wish he were at home!"

Mr. Crawford was silent, and again he appeared to be thinking deeply. He was not a pale-faced man at any time, but now his color was visibly increasing. His face was also changing its expression, and it wore a strong reminder of the look which had come into his son Ned's countenance when the fever of Mexican exploration took hold of him. People say "like father, like son," and it may be that Ned's readiness for a trip into the interior belonged to something which had descended to him from a father who had been willing to educate his son for the southern trade by sending him to sea with Captain Kemp. The United States has had a great many commercial men of that stamp, and there was a time when almost all the navy the nation possessed was provided by the merchant patriots, who armed and sent out, or themselves commanded, its fleets of privateers. Very likely the Crawfords and a number of other American families could point back to as adventurous an ancestry as could any Spaniard whose forefathers had fought Moors or won estates for themselves in Mexico or Peru. As for Mrs. Crawford, she was hardly able to drink her coffee that morning, after reading the newspaper, and she might have been even more willing to have Ned come home if she had known what had become of the _Goshhawk_, and in what company he was a couple of hours after she arose from her table.

Company? That was it. He was now walking along one of the streets of Vera Cruz with a squad of men of whom she would have decidedly disapproved, but whose character her husband would have understood at sight. Ned's first acquaintance, Pablo, as he called himself, with his four comrades, made up so thoroughly Mexican a party at all points that it was in no danger of being interfered with by the mob. Every member of this had seen, often enough, the son of some wealthy landholder from the upland country attended by a sufficient number of his own retainers to keep him from being plundered, and it was well enough to let him alone. On they went, but it was by a circuitous route and a back street that they reached the Tassara place. Even then, they did not enter it by the front door, but by a path which led down to the stables in the rear of the house. No outsider would afterward be able to say that he saw that party of men march into the courtyard to be welcomed by Colonel Tassara and the mysterious personage whom Ned was trying to think of as General Zuroaga.

"He may be of more importance than I had any idea of," said Ned to himself, "and I wish I knew what was coming next."

He was not to find out immediately, for Zuroaga motioned him to go on into the house, while he himself and Tassara remained to talk with Pablo and the other machete-bearers.

Hardly was Ned three steps inside of the dwelling, when he was met by Senora Tassara, apparently in a state of much mental agitation.

"My dear young friend!" she exclaimed, "I am so glad you have escaped from them! Come in. We shall have no regular dinner to-day. You will eat your luncheon now, however. We are all busy packing up. We must set out for the country as soon as it is dark. The colonel's enemies are following him like so many wolves! Felicia, my dear, you will see that Senor Carfora is properly attended to."

The saucy senorita was standing a little behind her mother, and she now beckoned to Ned, as if she had no hostility for him whatever.

"Come right along in," she said, peremptorily. "I must eat my luncheon, too. I want to hear where you have been, and what you have been doing. Is there any more news from the war? Have your gringo generals been beaten again? Tell me all you know!"

She was evidently in the habit of being obeyed by those around her, and Ned felt decidedly obedient, but this was his first intimation that it was fully noon. Time had passed more rapidly than he had been aware of, for his mind had been too busy to take note of it. He was hungrily ready to obey, however, especially concerning the luncheon, and his first bit of news appeared to please his little hostess exceedingly.

"Not another ship is in," he told her, "and I don't believe there is going to be any war, anyhow, but I saw some of your soldiers. They were guarding the American consulate from the mob. They were splendid-looking fellows. Is your father's regiment of that kind of men?"

"Father's regiment?" she said, angrily. "That's just the difficulty now. He hasn't any soldiers. Those that he had were taken away from him. So he must go and gather some more, or President Paredes will say that he is not patriotic. They took his old regiment away from him after he had made it a real good one. Tell me about your gringo soldiers. Are there a great many of them? Do they know how to fight? I don't believe they do."

She was all on fire about the war and her father's enemies, and Ned was ready to tell her all he knew of the American army, if not a little more. At least, he described to her the elegant uniforms which were worn on parade occasions by the New York City militia regiments, feathers, flags, brass bands, and all, rather than the external appearance of any martial array that General Taylor was likely to take with him when he invaded Mexico. Felicia was especially interested in those magnificent brass bands and wished that she could have some of them taken prisoners to come and play in front of her house, but all the while they were talking he was glancing furtively around the room. This had undergone a remarkable change during his brief absence. The trophies of arms were all gone, and the wonderful Seville coffee-urn had disappeared. Perhaps it had walked away, beyond the reach of possible thieves, and with it may have gone the other silverware of the Tassara family. Senorita Felicia's quick eyes had followed his own, for she was watching him.

"Yes, Senor Carfora," she said, "it's all gone. The china is all stored away in the deep cellar. I don't believe they could find it, and if they did they could not carry it away to melt it up and make dollars of it. That's what they did with all the silver one of my aunts had, except some spoons that were hid in the stable, under the hay. One of the robbers went into the stable to hunt, too, and a good mule kicked him dead. If anybody comes to rob this house while we are gone, I wish he might be kicked by one of our mules at the hacienda. He would not steal any more."

Ned had other things to tell her, about the United States forts, troops, and ships of war, and she had stories to tell with excited vivacity that set forth sadly enough the wretchedly unsettled condition of her country, which she appeared to love so well, after all. Troubled as it was, it was her own land, and she hated its enemies.

It was a hot, oppressive day, with a promise of greater heat soon to come, and the weather itself might be a good enough reason why any family should be in a hurry to get out of the _tierra caliente_. As for the removal of valuable property, Ned had already learned that Vera Cruz was haunted not only by bad characters from the interior, but by desperadoes from up and down the coast and from the West India Islands. He was not near enough to hear, however, when Zuroaga remarked to his friend Tassara:

"You are right, my dear colonel. The Americans will hold the Texan border with a strong hand, but if Paredes does not promptly come to terms with them, we shall see a fleet and army at Vera Cruz before long. This is the weak point of our unhappy republic."

"I think not," replied Tassara, gloomily. "I wish it were a solid nation, as strong as the castle out yonder. Our weak point is that we are cut up into factions, and cannot make use of the strength that we really have undeveloped. As for anything else, one case of yellow fever was reported yesterday, and I am informed that his Excellency, President Paredes, talks of coming here shortly to confer with Colonel Guerra. That may mean trouble for him, and neither you nor I would wish to be brought before any such council of war as might be called together."

"It might not consist altogether of our friends," said Zuroaga. "In my case, if not in yours, it might be followed quickly by an order for a file of soldiers and a volley of musketry. I should not look for mercy from a tiger."

"On the other hand," responded the colonel, "it would be well for him to be careful just now. He will need all the strength he can obtain."

"Humph!" exclaimed Zuroaga. "He will try to leave no living, or, at least, no unimprisoned enemies behind him when he marches for the border."

It was plain that they were not to be numbered among their President's friends, whether or not they were altogether just to him. Bloody severity in putting down sedition was the long-established custom in Mexico, and one man might not be more to blame for it than another. It had been handed down from the old days of Spanish rule, and the record which had been made is not by any means pleasant reading.

When the luncheon was over, the senorita left Ned to himself, appearing to feel somewhat more friendly than at first, but still considering him as a gringo and a foreigner. She said she had some things to pack up, and he went to look after his own. These did not require much packing, and before long he had again found his way out to the courtyard and the stables. These were indeed the most interesting spots about the place, for they contained all the men, the horses, and the mules. Ned shortly concluded that here were also gathered most of the firearms and at least a dozen of the wildest kind of Mexican Indians, all ragged and all barefooted. Preparations for a journey were going forward under Senora Tassara's direction, and Ned pretty quickly understood that the men were a great deal more afraid of her than they were of her husband. He felt so himself, and he instantly got out of her way, as she told him to do, when he unwisely undertook to help her with her packing.

The horses were of several sorts and sizes, and more like them were shortly brought in. One large spring wagon and a covered carryall carriage were in good order. Both were of American manufacture, and so was the harness of the teams which were to draw them. Ned was feeling a certain degree of curiosity as to what kind of carriage was to carry him, when Senor Zuroaga beckoned him to one side and said:

"We shall be with Colonel Tassara's party only the first day. But I have been thinking. When we were on the _Goshhawk_, you told me that you had never ridden a horse in your life----"

"Why, I'm a city boy," interrupted Ned. "There isn't any horseback riding done there. I'd rather go on wheels."

"Of course you would," laughed Zuroaga. "But there won't be any use for wheels on some of the roads I am to follow. I've picked you out a pony that you can manage, though, and you will soon learn. You will have to be a horseman if you are to travel in Mexico."

"So father used to tell me," said Ned. "He can ride anything. Which of these is my horse? They all look skittish----"

"Neither of these would do for you," replied the senor. "But listen to me sharply. Twice you have called me general. Don't do it again until we are beyond the mountains. I'm only a plain senor in all this region of the country. I only hope that some men in Vera Cruz do not already know that I am here. If they did, I am afraid I should not get out so easily. This is your horse. He is a good one."

Hitched to a post near the wall was a fat, undersized animal, black as jet, and with more mane and tail than was at all reasonable. He carried a Mexican saddle with wooden stirrups and a tremendous curb-bit bridle. In front of the saddle were pistol holsters, and behind it hung an ammunition case, as if Ned were about to become a trooper. He went to examine the holsters, and found that each of them contained a large horse-pistol with a flintlock. He also found powder and bullets in the case, and he wondered whether or not he would ever be able to shoot anybody with one of those heavy, long-barrelled things without having something to rest it on.

"I practised for an hour once in a pistol-gallery," he remarked, "but it wasn't with anything like that."

"You didn't hit centre even then, eh?" laughed the senor. "Well, not many men can do much with them, but they are better than nothing. They are too heavy for a hand like yours. Here is your machete. Put it on."

Ned felt a queer tingle all over him, as he took the weapon and hitched it at his belt. Then he drew it from the sheath and looked at it, swinging it up and down to feel its weight. It was a straight, one-edged blade, with a sharp point, and a brass basket hilt, and he remarked:

"Senor Zuroaga, I could hit with that, I guess."

His face had flushed fiery red, and it could be seen, from his handling of the machete, that his muscles were unusually strong for his size and age. The senor nodded his approbation, as he remarked:

"I think you will do. There is fight in you, but I hope we shall have no fighting to do just now. I shall try to find a safe road home."

"A fellow could cut down bushes with this thing," said Ned.

"That's exactly what our rancheros use them for," replied the senor. "They will do almost anything with a machete. They will cut their way through thick chaparral, kill and cut up beef cattle, split wood, fight men or animals, and on the whole it's about the most useful tool there is in a Mexican camp or hacienda."

"What's that?" asked Ned.

"Any kind of farm with a house on it," said the senor. "You may have to learn all about haciendas before you get home."

"Just what I'd like to do," said Ned. "I'll learn how to ride, too. How soon are we to set out?"

"Not till after dark," said the senor. "But you need not be in any hurry to get into the saddle. You will have quite enough of it before you get out of it again. There is a long ride before us to-night."

"I'm ready," replied Ned, but nevertheless he looked at that Mexican saddle with doubtful eyes, as if he were thinking that it might possibly prove to be a place of trial for a beginner.

At that very hour there were several gentlemen in uniform closeted with Colonel Guerra in one of the rooms of the Castle of San Juan de Ulua. The colonel appeared to have been giving them a detailed report of the condition of the fortress and of its means for defence, whether or not he had stated exactly the amount of the ammunition brought him by the ill-fated _Goshhawk_. Other subjects of conversation must now have come up, however, for one of them arose with great dignity of manner, remarking:

"My dear colonel, I am glad that I shall be able to make so encouraging a report to his Excellency. As for Colonel Tassara, we shall serve our warrant upon him some time to-morrow. We are informed that, beyond a doubt, the traitor Zuroaga intends to return from Europe shortly. As sure as he does, he will be engaged in dangerous intrigues against the existing order of things, and the good of the country requires that he shall be brought to justice before he can put any of his nefarious plans in operation. At the same time, we are assured that the invaders upon the Rio Grande will soon be defeated yet more thoroughly."

All the rest had arisen while he was speaking, and one of them, a fat, short man in a brilliant uniform, added, enthusiastically:

"We feel that we can rely upon you, Colonel Guerra. We pity the gringos if they should attempt to beleaguer this impregnable fortress. For my own part, I believe that Colonel Tassara's court martial can have but one result. His disobedience must be paid for with his life. All conspirators like Zuroaga should be shot as soon as they are captured. This is not a time, my friends, for undue leniency."

"Gentlemen," responded Colonel Guerra with graceful courtesy, "I bid you all a brief farewell with sincere regret. Your visit has given me unmixed satisfaction. Do not forget that all of you are to dine with me to-morrow. From my very heart I can echo your noble sentiments of valor and patriotism and of devotion to our beloved commander-in-chief, his heroic Excellency, President Paredes."

Then followed smiles and handshakings of mutual confidence all around, and the visiting officers took their departure. Hardly had the door closed behind them, however, before Colonel Guerra again sat down, hoarsely muttering between his set teeth:

"The snake-hearted villains! What they really hoped for was to find the fort and garrison in bad condition and unprovided, so that they might ruin me. They want my disgrace and removal, to make room for one of them. I don't believe they will catch either Tassara or Zuroaga this time. The colonel will soon raise his new regiment, and my old friend will be down in Oaxaca in safety, waiting for the hour that is to come. Paredes would give something to see my last letter from Santa Anna."

So there were many plots and counterplots, and the politest men might not be always what they seemed.

Chapter VIII.

Out Of The Tierra Caliente

Those were days of great commotion in the Congress of the United States. The whole nation, South as well as North, was divided in opinion as to the righteousness and expediency of the war with Mexico. There were two great parties, both of which have long since passed away, for the question of the annexation of Texas is no longer before the people, and all this was more than half a century ago. One of the parties called itself "Whig," but its enemies described its members as "Coons," in the habit of roosting up a tree out of reach. The other party called itself "Democratic," while its opponents lampooned its members as "Loco-focos," comparing them to the blue-headed sulphur matches of that name, which were largely manufactured and did not burn very well. Party feeling ran high, and the debates in Congress were red-hot. The Democratic President, James K. Polk, was a man of far greater ability and statesmanship than his party enemies were willing to give him credit for, and he was supported by a brilliant array of politicians. On the other hand, the Whig party contained a number of our most distinguished statesmen, and, curiously enough, most of the generals of the army, including Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, were well-known Whigs. It was not altogether unnatural, therefore, that the Democratic party in power should wish to put the command of any army preparing for the invasion of Mexico into the hands of officers who were in favor of the war which they were to carry on. Questions like this, and some others relating to the unprepared condition of the American army for so tremendous an undertaking, were responsible for the fact that there was a long delay in all military operations, even after the hard and successful fighting done by General Taylor's forces at the Rio Grande.

American cruisers were tacking to and fro over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, without any especial errand of which their commanders were aware. Regiments of eager volunteers were forming in several of the States, and were trying hard to discover officers who knew how to drill and handle them. The politicians were everywhere calling each other harder and harder names. Not one soul in all the United States, however, knew anything of a party of mounted men, a carriage, and a spring-wagon, which quietly made its way out of the city of Vera Cruz, not long after sunset, one sultry and lazy evening. At the head of this cavalcade rode two men, who sat upon their spirited horses as if they were at home in the saddle. At their right, however, was a young fellow on a black pony who was entirely satisfied with the fact that the beast under him did not seem to have any spirit at all. He was at that moment steadying his feet in the stirrups, and remarking to himself:

"I'm glad none of them saw me mount him. I got upon a high box first, and even then my machete was tangled with my legs, and I all but fell over him. I'll get the senor to show me how, or I'll be laughed at by the men."

He was doing fairly well at present, for the road went up a hill, and the night was not one for foolishly fast travelling. He could listen all the better, and one of his companions was saying to the other:

"My dear Zuroaga, we have gained four miles. Every one of them is worth something handsome to you and me. In my opinion, we did not get away a moment too soon to save our necks."

"Not one minute!" replied the other, with strong emphasis. "Not even if Guerra can succeed in gaining for us the best part of another day, as he believed he could. Perhaps our best chance, after all, is that he has only one company of lancers, and that any officer sent with it might have instructions which would take him by another road than this."

"The inspector-general had with him an escort of his own," said Tassara. "If he should send those fellows, they would be likely to know how to find us. They are not under the orders of Guerra."

"If," exclaimed Zuroaga, fiercely, "they do not overtake us until after the middle of our second day out, I believe they would be unlucky to try to arrest us. I hope they will be wise, and not tire out their horses with too much haste. I feel as if I could shoot pretty straight if I should see them coming within range."

"So could I," replied Tassara.

The road which they were then following ran between cultivated lands on either side. It was not tree-shadowed, and, as Ned looked back, the moonlight showed him something that made him think rapidly. Additional horsemen had joined them after they had left the city behind them, and it occurred to him that arrangements had been made beforehand for something like a small war. There were not less than twenty armed men, besides himself and the pair who were with him. For some reason or other, moreover, the wagon, which was drawn by four mules, and the carriage, drawn by a pair of fine animals of the same sort, were driven on well in advance. It appeared, therefore, as if no danger was expected to meet them from the opposite direction, and that Senora Tassara and her daughter were fairly well protected from any peril which might come after them along the road from Vera Cruz. The next thing that struck Ned, little as he knew about war, was that these horsemen were riding two and two, not in a straggling procession, but in as perfect order as if they had been trained cavalry. If he had known a little more, he would have declared:

"That is just what they are."

He might not also have known that all but six of them were from the Tassara estates, and that the odd half-dozen were lifelong servants of the proscribed descendant of Hernando Cortes. If he could have understood those men, he might also have comprehended one important feature of the tangled politics of Mexico, and why ambitious military men were every now and then able to set up for themselves, and defy the central government until it could manage to capture them, and have them shot as rebels. Wiser men than he, looking at the matter from the outside, might also have understood how greatly it was to the credit of President Paredes that he was making so good a stand against the power of the United States while hampered by so many difficulties. Ned was no politician at all, and it was a mere impulse, or a tired feeling, which led him to pull in his pony and let the men catch up with him, so that he might chat with them, one after another, and get acquainted. He found that they were under no orders not to talk. On the contrary, every man of them seemed to know that Ned had come home from the school which he had been att