“Hullo!” thought Ned. “That’s the Spanish name Señor 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. Señor 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?