It was natural enough that the Government, involved in a dangerous and costly war, should decline to entertain such a costly proposal. The Post-Office, however, willing to strengthen its hands against the merchants, put forward a modified scheme for arming each Packet with ten four-pounders and forty men, at an extra cost of £8,000 yearly; and if more losses had been reported while that scheme was before the Treasury, it may have been that the Government would have accepted it. But unfortunately for the merchants, there was at this particular period a lull in the storm. Four months passed without disaster. Then came the report that the “Grantham” had been captured, but after a stout fight; and following the receipt of that news another equal period of good fortune. The disasters of February seemed to be exceptional. A House of Commons Committee was urging that by every means Post-Office expenditure should be reduced; the Treasury yielded to the greater pressure, and declined the Postmaster General’s proposals. The “Grantham” was commanded by Captain James Bull, an officer of long experience and proved ability, whose son, Captain John Bull, afterwards made a considerable reputation as commander of “Duke of Marlborough,” of which much will be heard in subsequent chapters of this work. The “Grantham” was attacked near Barbados by a French Privateer of “fourteen double fortified four-pounders and one hundred and eleven men.” She was much shattered in the action which preceded her capture; but no details of the fight have been preserved. Not long after it was decided, the “Tamar” frigate happily chanced to pass that way, and delivered Captain Bull and his men from the prospect of a French prison. Those optimists who held the comfortable faith that the disasters of February, 1797, were not likely to be repeated received an uncomfortable shock in the last month of that year and the first of the new one. The “Countess of Leicester,” which sailed from Falmouth on November 21st with mails for New York, should, under normal circumstances, have carried only those of the previous week. But it was at this time a practical impossibility to despatch every mail as soon as it reached Falmouth; and—strange as it seems to us to hear of such delays—the “Countess of Leicester” had on board not only the bags made up for her regular turn, but also those which should have been despatched from Falmouth on November 1st, but which had lain there three weeks, waiting for a Packet. It is difficult in these days even to imagine the outcry which would be caused by the delay of a mail for three weeks at the port of embarkation. But in 1797 such inconveniences were the trifles at which reasonable men did not cavil. The grievance lay in the fact that both mails were ultimately lost altogether.