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—hedid not care who—to get away from all those war-sharks. Well to the westward, with every sail spread that she could carry, theGoshawksped 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 readyjust 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 Señor Zuroaga was standing, gazing dreamily westward.
“Good morning, señor!” 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 señor, “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 señor, 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 thehero’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 theGoshawkthrown in by way of variation. He was thinking about it, however, rather than asking questions, and the señor 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 pouringalong 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 señor talked on about the terrible history of Mexico, with its factions, its bloody revenges, its pronunciamentos, and its fruitless revolutions, theGoshawksailed 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 linesof 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 ashimself, 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 countrysouth 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 theGoshawkwas 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 thesame 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 theGoshawka 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, theGoshawkbecame 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?”
“Goshawk, from Liverpool to Vera Cruz, with supplies for the Castle of San Juan de Ulua. What ship is that?”
“SchoonerTampico, 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 theGoshawkwas 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’shead, 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 Señor 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 theGoshawkmight 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 outclearly 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 oldPortsmouthmust 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 oneYankee’d dare to follow us under the guns of San Juan de Ulua.”
“I reckon not,” slowly responded the mate of theGoshawk, “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 theGoshawkwere 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 thingto 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 pursuingPortsmouth. 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 Señor 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 thePortsmouthwere indeedsounding 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 señor, 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 thePortsmouthhad 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 theGoshawk, if the iron thrown had struck her at or near the water-line. None of it did so, but the next exclamation of SeñorZuroaga 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 thePortsmouth’sbows.
“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-poundershot 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, thePortsmouthhad ample opportunity given her to swing around and sweep swiftly out of danger. She had barely escaped paying dearly for her pursuit of theGoshawk.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 theGoshawkhad been at fever heat, but it was now diminishing rapidly, for she did not containa man who was not well pleased to see thePortsmouthgive 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 Señor Zuroaga came aft, to where Ned was curiously studying the work of the 32-pound shot at the stern. The señor 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 señor, 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 señor, 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 boatswhich were pulling out toward theGoshawk.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 señor 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 thePortsmouthwas 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 upMexico. 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 Señor 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 theGoshawkwhen 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 thePortsmouth, 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 thatgringo 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 señor 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 Señor Zuroaga brought the powder, and he didn’t. He believes thatthe señor is going in for old Santa Anna, and he isn’t. He believes that the señor 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 thisin 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 ofhaving 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.
“Señor,” 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 señor. “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 señor 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 havedecided 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 señor, “I will tell you, and you had better put it into your letter. First, you just wait and see what becomes of theGoshawk. 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 señor, “for your not lingering down here in thetierra 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 haveeven 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 señor 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 workmenwere 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 thePortsmouthsink theGoshawk.
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 performedby 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 theGoshawk, 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 thathis 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 Señor Carfora. Is he on board?”
“Hullo!” thought Ned. “That’s the Spanish name Señor 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 doso, that it was something about the cargo. Ned himself listened eagerly, while the speaker went on: “I am Colonel Tassara. Señor 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. Thefact 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?