The discontent showed itself at once. There was something resembling mutiny at Falmouth. The crews of several vessels refused to proceed to sea, and their captains reported that they could not obtain sailors unless the trade were restored. The Government stood firm. The memorials of the seamen pointed out that their wages, if they must rely on them solely, were not sufficient for their maintenance and for that of their families. The statement was perfectly true, for the trade had been so fully recognized by the authorities that it was always held to be unnecessary to pay any but low wages to men who were earning so much by private speculation. The wages had to be increased, but the increase of course could not be equivalent to the amount of profit lost by the new rule; and a smouldering mass of discontent was left at Falmouth which in years to come broke out again and again into mutiny. CHAPTER VI. THE NORTH SEA PACKETS. Thus far, for the sake of clearness, the narrative has concerned itself with the Falmouth Packets alone. The successive developments by which the root of the mischief existing on the Cornish station gradually revealed itself to all the world were too important to be complicated with the affairs of other stations, especially when those affairs, with very few exceptions, were neither interesting nor considerable. In fact, it is only on the stations whence the North Sea Packets sailed that one is tempted to linger at all after leaving Falmouth. The record of the Irish Packets is incomparably dull. Squabbles between the Post-Office of Great Britain and the Post-Office of Ireland about the precise amount of influence which each should exercise over the Holyhead or the Milford boats, interminable arguments concerning the regulations under which noblemen’s carriages might be stowed on deck during the voyage, lengthy surveys of the coast, complaints from the agent that the captains were disrespectful and from the captains that the agent interfered unwarrantably in their private affairs—such were the subjects of the bulky reports which filled the pigeon-holes devoted at the General Post-Office to the affairs of the two lines of communication with the opposite side of St. George’s Channel. The Irish Packets, so far as we know, were never in action during the years of which this volume treats. Almost the same remark indeed might be made of the North Sea Packets; but here an interest of another kind arises. The Harwich and Dover boats played manfully a part in a drama of the greatest moment to this country. It was a game in which shot and powder had scarcely any part; yet it called for courage of the highest order, and for resource and seamanship such as British sailors have always shown themselves possessed of in time of need.