“I guess I understand,” said Ned. “I heard what you said about the way things are going. But what did you mean about our being in the Nicholas Channel? What has that got to do with it?”
“Talk Spanish!” replied the señor, with whom the boy appeared to be upon good terms. “I do not want any of those sailors to understand me, though I’m very glad that you can. How did that happen?”
“Well,” said Ned, “father’s been all his life in the Cuban and Mexican trade, and I’m to grow up into it. I can’t remember just when they began to teach me Spanish. I was thinking about the war, though. If it’s coming, I want to see some of the fighting.”
“You may see more than you will like,” said his friend in his own tongue. “Now, as to where we are, remember your geography.”
“I can remember every map in it,” said Ned, confidently.
“Good!” said the señor. “Now! You know that the Gulf Stream runs along the coast of Florida. Our road from Liverpool to the gulf was to have taken us by that way. Instead of that, we came around below the Bahama Islands, and here we are off the north coast of Cuba. Captain Kemp’s reason is that there might be too many American cruisers along the Florida coast, and he does not care to be stopped by one of them, if the war has already begun. We would not be allowed to go any further.”
“I see,” said Ned. “Of course not. They would stop us, to keep us from being captured by the Mexicans when we got to Vera Cruz.”
“Not exactly,” said the señor, half laughing, “but it might cost your father and his partners their ship and cargo. That is the secret the sailors are not to know. Away up northward there, a hundred miles or so, are the Florida Keys, and among them is the United States naval station at Key West. There are ships of war there, and Captain Kemp will not sail any nearer to them than he can help. Ned, did you have any idea that you were sitting over a Mexican powder-magazine?”
“No!” exclaimed Ned. “What on earth do you mean?”
“I think I had better tell you,” said the señor. “I half suspected it before we sailed, and I learned the whole truth afterward. The New York and Liverpool firm that your father belongs to sent on board an honest and peaceable cargo, but there was a good deal of room left in the hold, and the captain filled it up with cannon-balls, musket-bullets, and gunpowder from the English agents of no less a man than General Santa Anna himself. It is all for his army, whenever he gets one, but it goes first to the castle of San Juan de Ulua, at Vera Cruz. If war has been declared, or if it has in any way begun, the whole thing is what they call contraband of war, and the Goshawk is liable to be captured and confiscated.”