“All the risk!” Hawley interrupted protestingly. “Well, I like that! I suppose you’re not running any risk at all? Why, you plucky girl!” he exclaimed, deep admiration in his tone. “As a matter of fact, you’re doing the lion’s share of the work. If our efforts to-night result in setting President Felix free, he’ll have you to thank for it more than anybody.”
“Nonsense!” the girl protested, much pleased, nevertheless, by his praise. “You know very well that I shan’t be in the slightest danger. Portiforo can’t do anything to me, even when he finds out the trick I’ve played his soldiers. If you thought that he could, you would never have taken me as your assistant. Don’t you suppose that I realize that?”
“But it’s going to get you into trouble with your father,” Hawley reminded her dryly. “I don’t imagine that Minister Throgmorton is going to be exactly pleased when he hears of his daughter’s escapade—especially when he finds out that her fellow conspirator is a Sentinel man.”
“Yes; I suppose my father will be angry,” Virginia agreed demurely. “However, that can’t be helped. I never have been able to understand his great friendship for Portiforo,” she went on, frowning. “It is a mystery to me why he is so persistently blind to the grossness of that tyrant. Possibly,” she suggested archly, “it is because Portiforo flatters him. Father is very susceptible to flattery.”
“Probably that is the reason,” the Camera Chap acquiesced. “Think you’ll be able to manage this boat all right after I leave you?” he inquired anxiously. “She runs very smoothly, and all you’ve got to do, you know, is to keep her headed straight for the fortress landing.
“That will be easy,” she assured him. “Fortunately I’ve had some experience with motor boats.”
“And you haven’t forgotten your instructions? You know just what you are to do after you land? Remember, everything depends upon your ability to keep the attention of the sentry focused on you until after I’ve got my picture.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Virginia confidently. “He’ll have to be an automaton if he’s able to turn a deaf ear to my heart-rending screams of distress.”
Hawley, busy with the motor, echoed her laugh. A little later the launch, running now under its own power, had drawn so near to the Kearsarge that they could hear her bells striking the hour. The Camera Chap abruptly changed their course. “We don’t want to get any nearer to the warship,” he explained to his companion. “They might take it into their heads, you know, to throw a searchlight on us, and just at present we’re not at all eager to bask in the limelight.”
Virginia gazed wistfully at the shadowy outline of the big vessel. “If only we could get them to help us,” she murmured. “With a hundred sturdy bluejackets from that ship, we could take the fortress and bring back President Felix himself, instead of merely his photograph.”