It's dry work watching these fellows." So we went along to the cafe 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 hull with red streak, carrying an unusually large crew and unusually heavy metal.

She flew a white flag with a red hand on it, her red figure-head was said to represent the same device, and she was known by the name of _La Main Rouge_.
John Ozanne folded the bill methodically and stowed it safely away in his pocket-book.
"It'd be a fortune if we caught him full," he said thoughtfully.

"They say he takes no prizes.