Breakfast at the inn was quiet, with only a handful of early-morning travellers in the taproom, and Ruth dishevelled as she served everybody.
Smith ate the usual mutton chop, washed it down with a small beer, and listened to the intermittent, early-morning conversation at the nearest table without much interest.
“Did you hear about Duguay?” The speaker was squat, bald, and unshaven.
There was a long pause before his companion, a fellow carter, replied. “No. Who is he?”
“Duguay, the French corsair, the privateer.”
“Oh, him, God rot his liver. What about him?”
The bald man slurped at his tankard. “The Navy captured him. HMS Partridge caught him cruising off Folkestone.”
Partridge Smith listened with more attention. Captain Duguay was one of the best known French privateers, a skilled
