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"When the Goshhawk was lying in the Bay of Vera Cruz, I was too busy to see anything. No, I wasn't. I did stare at the Orizaba mountain peak, and they told me it is over seventeen thousand feet high. First mountain I ever saw that could keep on snow and ice in such weather as this. I don't want to live up there in winter. Well! Now I've seen some of the biggest trees I ever did see.
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.
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 Señor Zuroaga; and I don't know yet what's become of the Goshhawk.
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!"
"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."
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.
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?"
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 Señorita 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.
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.
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."
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