very well. I don't wonder at them now, and I don't blame them either.
But this 'trying to get a ship' is pretty hard on a youngster all the
same . . . "

He went on then to tell us how tired he was and how discouraged by this
lesson of disillusion following swiftly upon the finest day of his life.
He told us how he went the round of all the ship-owners' offices in the
City where some junior clerk would furnish him with printed forms of
application which he took home to fill up in the evening. He used to run
out just before midnight to post them in the nearest pillar-box. And
that was all that ever came of it. In his own words: he might just as
well have dropped them all properly addressed and stamped into the sewer
grating.

Then one day, as he was wending his weary way to the docks, he met a
friend and former shipmate a little older than himself outside the
Fenchurch Street Railway Station.

He craved for sympathy but his friend had just "got a ship" that very
morning and was hurrying home in a state of outward joy and inward
uneasiness usual to a sailor who after many days of waiting suddenly gets
a berth. This friend had the time to condole with him but briefly. He
must be moving. Then as he was running off, over his shoulder as it
were, he suggested: "Why don't you go and speak to Mr. Powell in the
Shipping Office." Our friend objected that he did not know Mr. Powell
from Adam. And the other already pretty near round the corner shouted
back advice: "Go to the private door of the Shipping Office and walk
right up to him. His desk is by the window. Go up boldly and say I sent
you."