"A good staunch boat, I should say. What can you get out of her?"

"Ten easy with these new spars, and she can come up as close as any boat
I've ever seen--except maybe yon black snake of Torode's,"--with a jerk of
the head towards Herm. "Seen her?"

"Yes, I've seen her. How's she in bad weather?"

"Wet, I should say. We can stand a heap more than she can."

"When do you expect to get off?"

"Inside a week. Come along and have a drink. It's dry work watching these
fellows."

So we went along to the café just behind us, and it was while we were
sitting there, sipping our cider, and I was telling him of my last voyage
and after-journeyings, that a man came in and slapped down on the table in
front of us a printed bill which, as it turned out afterwards, concerned us
both more nearly than we knew.

"Ah!" said John Ozanne, "I'd heard of that. If we happen across him we'll
pick up that five thousand pounds or we'll know the reason why."

It was a notice sent out by one John Julius Angerstein, of Lloyds in the
City of London, on behalf of the merchants and shipowners there, offering a
reward of five thousand pounds for the capture, or proof of the
destruction, of a French privateer which had for some time past been making
great play with British shipping in the Channel and Bay of Biscay. She was
described as a schooner of one hundred and fifty tons or thereabouts, black