ed 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."

"P