dden dashes at the outposts, for the
"rancheros," as the Mexican horsemen were called, were both well-mounted
and enterprising. There was yet another kind of calm of a curious
character. General Taylor absolutely did not know what to do next, and
he could not know until after he should hear from the President what the
statesmen in Congress had decided. Beyond a doubt, war was going on
right here, but there was a dispute as to the nature of it and as to
what was to be done with it. The Mexican geographers claimed that the
southern boundary of Texas, even if it had been legally annexed to the
United States, was at the Nueces River, and that all their country
south of that line was still their own. According to them, therefore,
General Taylor's army was not in Texas at all, but in Mexico. On the
other hand, the American geographers placed the boundary at the Rio
Grande, many miles south of the Nueces, and claimed that the forces
defeated by General Taylor had invaded the United States. If both
parties were right, then it might have been said that all that land
between the rivers did not belong to anybody until the title to it
should be settled by a military court and gunpowder arguments. That was
really the way in which it was finally settled, and there is now no more
dispute about it. History tells us that so have all the great national
land titles of the world been argued and determined.

There was what some people call a waiting spell, and all things on sea
or land might be spoken of as feverishly quiet for a day or two. In the
afternoon of the third day, however, there was a sort of change in the
weather at one spot away out on the gulf. There was not a cloud in the
sky, indeed, and the _Goshhawk_ was skimming along under full sail so
steadily that part of her crew had nothing better to do than to lie
around on the deck, and feel satisfied that the breeze was so very good.
In the same manner, the American soldiers in the neighborhood of Fort
Brown were lying around in and out of their tents, and wishing that they
had more shade to protect them from the hot sun of Texas or Mexico,
whichever it might be. At that hour, however, there arrived upon the
_Goshhawk_ a bit of unexpected news which awakened everybody, for the man
at the lookout announced, excitedly:

"Schooner under Mexican flag, sir! Well away to loo'ard. Looks as if she
might come pretty nigh us."

"Just the thing I wanted!" shouted Captain Kemp, springing t