arred that, and he had
fastened his window firmly, but he could not feel entirely secure, and
he got up twice to go to the door and listen.

Day after day went by from that time in very much the same manner, and
Ned believed that he was learning a great deal about war, whether or not
it would ever do him any good in business affairs after the war had
come to an end. The entire American army, guns and all, reached the
shore in safety, and all the while Santa Anna and his army were reported
as coming, coming, but they did not come, and the hearts of the besieged
garrison and the terror-stricken people began to die within them.

"They will be too late now," thought Ned, but he did not dare to say as
much to any of his Mexican friends.

From time to time he had been out to ply his telescope upon the fleet
and upon the army. He knew that all the American camps had been
established beyond the reach of any guns in the city fortifications, and
he had watched with intense interest the slow, sure processes of a
regular siege, conducted by a rarely capable general. He had seen the
erection of battery after battery, of which General Scott's artillerymen
were as yet making hardly any apparent use. He did not quite understand
that, in merely being there, more and more of them, those batteries were
already capturing the city. They were sending so few shots at the walls,
or even at the grim Castle of San Juan de Ulua, because the American
general wished to take Vera Cruz without bloodshed, if he could, and he
came very near to the accomplishment of his humane purpose.
Undoubtedly, he would have succeeded in starving out the city, if he,
too, had not received daily notice of the nearer approach of Santa Anna
and all the forces which he could gather. Nobody but that general
himself and his confidential officers knew how really few they were, or
how unfit to assail the Americans in their fortified camps on the shore
of the sea. So, a final day came when the surrender of Vera Cruz was
formally demanded, under the awful penalty of a general bombardment by
the American fleet and army in case of a refusal. Resistance, it was
declared, was now hopeless, and there was no military necessity for
killing anybody. General Morales sent back a positive rejection, for he
still entertained a faint hope of the timely arrival of assistance, and
he did not inform General Scott how sadly he had failed in all his
attempts to obtain supplies for the inhabi