“My choice little crew,” as Captain Petre called them, were perfectly prepared to receive their enemies, and harassed them with pikes and cutlasses as they struggled up the boarding nettings. The numbers of the French were so great, however, that they would doubtless have overpowered the Cornishmen in the end, had not Captain Petre, noticing that the enemy had omitted to cast out grapplings, so that nothing but the direction of the Privateer’s helm kept the ships together, ordered his best marksman to shoot the steersman. As the man fell, and the tiller swung round, another ran forward and jammed it into the necessary position, but he had hardly done so when he too fell across his comrade’s body. There was a moment’s hesitation before another man sprang to seize the helm, and in that moment the vessels parted. It was then an easy matter to dispose of the few Frenchmen who had made good their footing on the Packet. As the Privateer sheered off, the Falmouth men clutched at the colours flying from her maingaff, and tore away the greater part of them. “I regret,” said Captain Petre, with pardonable triumph, when on his return to England he forwarded this trophy to the Postmaster General, “I regret that they had hold of nothing stronger.” Perhaps he did, but looking at the relative force of the two vessels it can scarcely be supposed that My Lords with their higher responsibility shared his regret. In September, Captain Anthony, whose successful actions in the “Cornwallis” have been described above, fought the Privateer “La Duquesne” of twelve guns for over two hours at close quarters, and beat her off at last with the loss of two men killed and two wounded; while in November, Captain John Bull had the misfortune to be captured, after a very gallant resistance, by “La Josephine,” a French brigantine carrying fourteen 24–pounders and sixty-eight men. CHAPTER X. THE MUTINY AT FALMOUTH. For some years My Lords the Postmaster General had found an ever growing source of satisfaction in the conduct of their Packets in face of the enemy. There was abundant credit to be had out of controlling a body of officers who went into action with the spirit of Captain Anthony, Captain Rogers, or Mr. James. The navy itself could have produced no better seamen or more gallant officers: yet, just as the navy was tainted here and there with mutiny, so the sailors of the Post-Office Service broke out occasionally in revolt, which was the more difficult to quell since the men were not subject to the provisions of the Mutiny Act.