Page:The empire and the century.djvu/344

 bell-mouthed dogs during a storm, and the efforts of master and mate to make themselves heard amid the canine outcry, and the howling of the blast.)

'Two servant maids, going as laundresses to my Lord Ambassador Methuen.' (Doubtless a delightful voyage for all concerned, if only the sea was smooth, and we may be sure the gallant Mounseers, in response to the signal 'Women on board,' sheered off without firing, dipping their ensign.)

'Dr. Crichton, carrying with him a cow, and other necessaries.' (Perhaps Dr. Crichton was on the way to some distant spot where milk, cream, butter, and cheese were as yet unknown.) It may be remembered that Jos Sedley complained: 'Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goat's milk' ('Vanity Fair').

Here is an official letter: 'Wee are concerned to find the letters brought by your boat (from the West Indies) to be so consumed by the ratts, that we cannot find out to whom they belong.'

And another runs: 'The woman, whose complaint we herewith send you, having given us much trouble upon the same, we desire you will enquire into the same, and see justice done her, believing she may have had her brandy stole from her by the sailors.'

The packets were constantly stopped by our own war vessels, and at last each vessel carrying mails displayed a 'postboy-jack'—a Union Jack with the additional design of a postboy blowing his horn—so as to be saved from its friends.

On December 1, 1798, the Antelope packet, with twenty men and some passengers, was pursued, caught, and grappled by the Atlanta a French privateer with eight guns and sixty-five men. The Frenchmen, after a sanguinary contest, were compelled to yield.

Another French privateer, in 1807, chased and grappled the Windsor Castle packet off Barbadoes, and suffered the same fate as the Atlanta.

Between April, 1798, and January, 1798, no less than