ulled away without any
interference on the part of the officials, military or civil. Perhaps
she was understood to have come there by order of Colonel Guerra. Toward
nightfall, however, that boat came again, as she did before, not running
in among the barges, but seeming to avoid them. There were five men in
her, and one of them stood up to say to a sailor at the rail:

"I wish to see young Senor Carfora. Is he on board?"

"Hullo!" thought Ned. "That's the Spanish name Senor Zuroaga told me I
was to go by." Then he sang out aloud, as he hurried across the deck,
"Here I am. What do you want of me?"

"Lean over and talk low," responded the man in the boat, but the one
sailor near them did not understand a word of Spanish, and he might
suppose, if he wished to do so, that it was something about the cargo.
Ned himself listened eagerly, while the speaker went on: "I am Colonel
Tassara. Senor Zuroaga must not come to the ship again. I will be here
to-morrow evening. May I be assured that you will then be ready to come
to my house?"

"Tell him of course you will!" said a voice behind Ned, peremptorily,
and it was Captain Kemp who had come over for a few words with Tassara.

"I'll be ready, colonel," said Ned, when his turn came to speak, and the
boat pulled away, leaving him and the captain by themselves.

"It's a good arrangement for you, my boy," said the captain. "Unless I
am mistaken, though, there are signs of the worst kind of a
northeasterly storm. This is a dangerous anchorage for that sort of
thing. I don't think I shall risk having too many men on board when the
norther gets here. The cargo will be all out, and the ship's well
insured. The American consul doesn't know a thing about the ammunition
or the running away from the cruisers. He has enough else on his hands
just now."

Ned did not care a great deal about that, but he was more than ever in a
hurry to see the end of his supercargo business. The fact was that an
air of something like mystery appeared to be gathering around him, and
there is a tremendous fascination in anything mysterious. What if he
were now getting right in behind the war, after a fashion, and at the
same time into the darkest kind of revolution or rebellion against the
power of President Paredes, in company with that wonderful adventurer,
General Santa Anna, and all the desperate characters of Mexico?

CHAPTER V.

THE WORK OF THE NORTHER

During the rest of that day and th