Now that the North Americans (as they were called) had been driven out, in the north, very likely they would try to invade Mexico at another point. Yes, no doubt they might be foolish enough to try Vera Cruz, hoping to march even to the City of Mexico from this direction! Of course, the notion was absurd, for the City of Mexico was two hundred and eighty miles by road, and on the other side of the mountains. So the Vera Cruzans laughed and bragged.
“No hay cuidado, no hay cuidado! Somos muy valientes. Es una ciudad siempre heroica, esta Vera Cruz de nosotros,” they said. Or, in other words; “No fear, no fear! We are very brave. It is a city always heroic, this Vera Cruz of ours.”
“That is right,” had agreed old Manuel and young Manuel, with whom Jerry lived and worked. “If those North Americans wish to come, let them try. We have two hundred great guns on the walls, and three hundred in the castle—some of them the largest in the world. Yes, and five thousand soldiers, and the brave General Morales to lead us.”
“The Vera Cruz walls are ten feet thick, and those of the castle are fifteen feet thick,” old Manuel added. “Cannon balls stick fast; that is all.”
“The guns will kill at two miles,” young Manuel added. “Never once have those North American ships dared to come within reach. The commander at the castle laughs. He says to the American commander: ‘Bring on your fleet. You may fire all your shot at us and we will not take the trouble to reply. We only despise you.’”
“Así es—that is so,” grunted old Manual. “The castle has stood there for two hundred and fifty years. Please God, it will stand there two hundred and fifty more years, for all that those Yahnkee savages can do.”
It was true that the American fighting ships had stayed far out from shore. They cruised back and forth, preventing supplies from being brought in. That was a blockade, but Vera Cruz did not care. It had plenty to eat. It went about its business: the fishing boats of the native Indians caught vast quantities of fish in the harbor, the ranches raised cattle and vegetables and fruits, and peons or laborers like the two Manuels cut fagots and carried loads of it on their burros into town, to sell as cooking fuel.
Thus it happened that Jerry, who worked hard with the two Manuels for his living, was out here amidst the sand hills, as usual, on this bright morning of March 9, 1847.
These sand hills fringed all the beach on both sides of the city, and extended inland half a mile. The winter gales or northers piled them up and moved them about. Some of them were thirty feet high—higher than the walls of the city. From their crests one could look right into Vera Cruz. They were grown between, and even to their tops, with dense brush or chaparral, of cactus and thorny shrubs, forming regular jungles; and there were many stagnant lagoons that bred mosquitoes and fevers.