oubts as to whether such a boat had any reasonable hope
of reaching the shore. It was now pitch-dark also, and he could but feel
that his adventures in Mexico were beginning in a remarkably unpleasant
manner. The landing could not have been made at any place along the
beach, where the surf was breaking so dangerously, and it looked almost
as perilous to approach the piers and wharves.

"How on earth are we to do it?" exclaimed Ned, in English, but no
answer came from the hard-breathing rowers.

Colonel Tassara seemed now to be steering a southerly course, instead of
directly landward, and Ned calculated that this would carry them past
all of the usual landing-places. It also gave them narrow escapes from
rolling over and over in the troughs between several high waves. On the
whole, therefore, it was a pretty rough boating excursion, but it was
not a long one. It did take them almost past the city front, and at last
Ned thought he saw a long, black shadow reaching out at the boat. It was
better than a shadow, for it was a long wooden pier, old enough to have
been built by Cortes himself. The waves were breaking clean over it,
but, at the same time, it was breaking them, so that around in the lee
of it the water was less boisterous, and the yawl might reach the beach
in safety. There was no wharf, but all Ned cared for was that he saw no
surf, and he felt better than he had at any moment since leaving the
_Goshhawk_. It was the same, for they said so, emphatically, with the
boatmen and Colonel Tassara.

"One of the men will take your bag," said the colonel to Ned, as soon as
they were out on shore. "We will go right along to my house, and we
shall hardly meet anybody just now. I'm glad of that. Santa Maria, how
dark it is getting! This will be the worst kind of norther."

A couple of lanterns had been taken from the boat. They had previously
been lighted by the colonel with much difficulty, and without them it
would have been impossible to follow the stony, grassy pathway by which
Ned Crawford made his first invasion of the Mexican territory. He did
not now feel like annexing any of it, although Mexican patriots asserted
that their title to Vera Cruz or the city of Mexico itself was no better
than their right to Texas. His gloomy march was a short one, and only a
few shadowy, unrecognized human beings passed him on the way.

The party came to a halt before a one-story stone dwelling, with a long
piazza in front of it,