The naval profession proved to be, unfortunately, one for which Edward Drysdale was altogether unfitted by temperament and bent of mind, and sad consequences followed. He had been at sea about eighteen months, when news reached England of a desperate, but successful cutting-out affair by the boats of the frigate to which he belonged. His name was not mentioned in the official report--but that could hardly have been hoped for--neither was it in the list of killed and wounded. A map of the coast where the fight took place was procured; the battle was fought over and over again by the two veterans, and they were still indulging in those pleasures of the imagination in the parlor of the "Hunter's Inn," when the landlord entered with a Plymouth paper in his hand, upon one paragraph in which his single orb of vision glared with fiery indignation. It was an extract from a letter written by one of the frigate's officers, plainly intimating that midshipman Drysdale had shown the white feather in the late brush with the enemy, and would be sent home by the first opportunity. The stroke of a dagger could have been nothing compared with the sharp agony which such an announcement inflicted on the young man's father, and Bradshaw was for a few moments equally thunder-stricken. But he quickly rallied. William Drysdale's son a coward! Pooh! The thing was out of nature--impossible; and very hearty were his maledictions, savagely echoed by Burnham, with whom young Drysdale was a great favorite, of the lying lubber that wrote the letter, and the newspaper rascals that printed it.