“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, SeÑor 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, SeÑor 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, seÑor,” 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 SeÑor 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.

SeÑor 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.