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 Lieutena