The conference between the merchants and the Postmaster General was grave and weighty, according to the dignified manners of those days. The merchants, after remarking that no arrangement of the Packet Service could be adequate for the purposes of their trade, which did not render it highly improbable that even one homeward bound Packet would be lost, proceeded to ask whether it really was the case that the new Packets had attained that swiftness of sailing to which all their qualities of defence had been sacrificed. The average duration of the outward passage to Jamaica (touching at Barbados and other islands) is, they said, 45 days, and from Jamaica to Falmouth (touching only at Cape Nicola), 35 days. Now, these are very ordinary passages, remarkable in no way for speed. And the merchants emphasized their point by repeating that Packets designed expressly for speed ought to have been able to outsail Privateers. Why, then, had they not done so? Because, they concluded, some abuses exist in the mode of loading or navigating the Packets. They were right; abuses did exist, of which the nature must be more fully explained in the next chapter. But before entering upon that subject, it will be well to complete the record of disasters, so that it may be understood more fully of what the merchants had to complain. One of the practical suggestions made at the conference was that the Admiralty might be asked to lend a cutter which could be sent out with mails for the Leeward Islands and Jamaica. The request was made and granted by the Admiralty; but the cutter fared no better than the Packets, for on her homeward voyage she, too, was captured. Great as was the number of Privateers which issued from the French and Spanish islands in the West Indies throughout this war, it was never so great as in the year 1798. How many were actually afloat will never be known; but, doubtless, the number captured by our cruisers in any one year bore some kind of rough fixed proportion to the whole body. Now, in 1796—if the figures given by Southey (_Chronological History of the West Indies_, Vol. III., p. 149) are correct—only sixteen were captured; but in 1797 the number had risen to sixty-seven; and in 1798 no less than ninety-nine of these sharks were brought in by our sloops and frigates. It may be that for every one so captured there were five still lurking in the creeks and shallow waters round Guadeloupe or Cuba; and numbers such as these might suggest that it was well-nigh impossible for our Packets to sail among the islands without encountering an enemy. But the ocean is wide, and it is marvellously easy for vessels to miss each other, even when both have the desire for an encounter.