CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PRISONER. The soft-footed man with the wolflike smile, known as Señor Lopez, was elated over the arrest of that adventurous man, the Camera Chap, and warmly congratulated himself upon the stroke of luck which had enabled him to bring it about so speedily, for it had been a mere coincidence that he happened to be standing near the dock, earlier that evening, when Hawley, accompanied by a young woman whom the spy immediately recognized as the daughter of the American minister, approached the water’s edge and furtively embarked in a motor boat. His curiosity aroused, Lopez would have followed the pair, but was prevented from doing so by his failure to obtain a craft in time; so he had to content himself for the time being with speculating as to the motive of this evidently secret expedition. At first he had supposed that they were bound for the American warship, but later the possibility that the fortress might be their goal had suggested itself to his mind. As soon as this suspicion occurred to him he sent a note to the commandant of the fortress warning him to keep a sharp lookout for the pair; but by the time his messenger reached the fortress Hawley had already been there, taken his snapshot, and escaped by throwing himself into the sea. Lopez’s note had arrived just as the commandant and Captain Reyes were questioning Virginia as to the identity of her mysterious companion, and it was for this reason that they had astonished the girl by their apparent courtesy in not pressing her to give them the information they desired. When Lopez’s messenger returned to him with a brief reply from the commandant stating what had occurred at the fortress, the spy decided to wait at the dock in the hope that later on the snapshot adventurer would return in one of the battleship’s launches; for he was shrewd enough to suspect that Hawley’s motive in throwing himself into the sea was to swim out to the _Kearsarge_. Possessed of the patience of a cat, he would have waited there all night if necessary, but such a display of endurance was not required of him, for shortly afterward a gray launch dashed up to the pier and two young men came ashore. Recognizing one of them as the man he was waiting for, the spy trailed the pair to San Cristobal, and thence to the Hotel Nacional. Then he hurried to the nearest barracks, provided himself with a military escort, and returned to make the arrest. After the soldiers had taken Hawley away Lopez spent some time in making a thorough search of the latter’s room at the Hotel Nacional. Then he went to the arsenal to have a talk with the prisoner.