Such is the spirit in which the Falmouth men fought their losing battles, earning glory if they could not reach success. CHAPTER XII. THE AMERICAN WAR. The number of Packets stationed at Falmouth was not as large as to enable My Lords, or their Secretary, Mr. Freeling, to contemplate the ravages of the American Privateers without dismay. The mere fact that so many Packets were either in the hands of the enemy or undergoing repairs which must necessarily be lengthy, was enough to create much embarrassment in the present, while the outlook for the immediate future was gloomy and depressing. The difficulties were exasperated by the total loss of the “Hinchinbrooke” in a hurricane in the West Indies, while, as if to show that Fortune had turned her back on the Post-Office, the news of this disaster was quickly followed by the report that the “Lady Emily” had been wrecked on a reef of rocks near Bermuda. Even these misfortunes did not exhaust the run of ill-luck. A violent outbreak of plague occurred at Malta. Every Packet arriving from the Mediterranean must perform quarantine at Sandgate Creek on the Kentish coast, and the delay and inconvenience thus caused proved a well-nigh intolerable addition to the perplexities of the administrators at Lombard Street. The West India merchants, moreover, who had held their peace of recent years, as well they might, seeing with what courage and devotion their interests were guarded, were once more complaining of the loss of mails, and demanded that every Packet should have twenty guns and sixty men. My Lords, however, in the gallantry of their officers and men, were fortified with arguments which they had not possessed in former discussions with these critics. Twenty guns, they pointed out, would not have saved the “Duke of Montrose” from Commodore Rogers, and though Captain Cock in the “Townshend” had achieved so much with his scanty armament that it was difficult to say what he might not have done with an increased force, yet My Lords claimed, not unjustly, that such a case was too far removed from ordinary experience to serve as the basis of an argument. Yet the prayer of the merchants was not altogether set aside; and when in July the brig “Morgiana” was tendered for service as a temporary Packet, Mr. Freeling noted that, being of 260 tons, considerably larger than any other vessel on the station, she ought to carry forty men and sixteen guns, and expressed the hope that this larger armament would restore some confidence in the city. The sequel is now to be related. It is curious to notice how some malignant influence mocked at all these efforts to arm the Packets more heavily, and rendered them all in turn equally vain.