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.

“SeÑor 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 seÑor, 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 seÑor. “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 seÑor, 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 seÑor. “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 seÑor. “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 SeÑor 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 SeÑor 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 seÑor.

“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 seÑor. “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! SeÑor, 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 SeÑor 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:

“SeÑor! 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.

“Because,” said the seÑor, 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.

SeÑor 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 Goshawk, 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk. 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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 SeÑor 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk. 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. SeÑor 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 Goshawk 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 Goshawk 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.