Of course, the triumphant bulletin did not make any mention of the fact that General Taylor had had no intention of advancing any further, being under express orders from General Scott not to do so, and that Santa Anna's well-planned and at first nearly successful attempt to crush the northern invaders had really proved a failure. Ned Crawford listened to Felicia's enthusiastic account of the battle with a curious question in his mind which he was too polite to utter. "Why," he thought, "if Santa Anna was so completely victorious, did he not make General Taylor surrender?" There was no one to inform Ned that the Mexican commander had invited General Taylor to do so before the fight was half over, and that the stubborn old American had unkindly refused the invitation. At this moment, however, the senorita's tongue began to busy itself with quite another matter. The United States fleet, under Commodore Connor, had, indeed, begun to arrive in front of Vera Cruz on the 18th of February, with a vast convoy of transport ships under its protection, having on board the army of General Scott. Neither Ned nor the senorita was aware, however, how many important questions have to be answered before so many military passengers might undertake to land, with all their baggage, within possible reach of the artillery of an enemy. Felicia, for her part, was positive that they all were too badly scared by the Castle of San Juan de Ulua and by the bad news from Buena Vista to so much as try to make a landing. "General Santa Anna himself is now marching down to meet them," she told him, "with his whole victorious army, and he will crush them as fast as they can get out of their ships." Owing to the grand reports from their army, this was precisely the idea which was forming in the minds of all the people of Mexico. "Oh, Senorita Felicia!" said Ned, as if he were quite willing to change the subject. "I've had a wonderful time. I've been travelling, travelling, travelling, everywhere with the general." "Tell me all about it!" she commanded him. "I want to know. It seems to me as if I had been shut up here and had not seen anybody." "Well, I can't tell it all just now," he said, "but when we left here we hurried all the way to Oaxaca. Then we stayed there awhile, among his own people, and nobody gave us any trouble. No, I mustn't forget one thing, though. A band of those mountain robbers came one night, and we had an awful fight with them--" "Did you kill any of them?" she asked, hastily. "They all ought to be killed. They are ready to murder anybody else."