Then he headed for Cortlandt Street; for Long Island, City.
finally, the Navy Yard. Along his way were the docks of the
tramp steamers where he might ship as steward in the
all-promising Sometime. He had never done anything so reckless
as actually to ask a skipper for the chance to go a-sailing, but
he had once gone into a mission society's free shipping-office
on West Street where a disapproving elder had grumped at him,
"Are you a sailor? No? Can't do anything for you, my friend.
Are you saved?" He wasn't going to risk another horror like
that, yet when the golden morning of Sometime dawned he
certainly was going to go cruising off to palm-bordered lagoons.

As he walked through Long Island City he contrived conversations
with the sailors he passed. It would have surprised a Norwegian
bos'un's mate to learn that he was really a gun-runner, and
that, as a matter of fact, he was now telling yarns of the
Spanish Main to the man who slid deprecatingly by him.

Mr. Wrenn envied the jackies on the training-ship and carelessly
went to sea as the President's guest in the admiral's barge and
was frightened by the stare of a sauntering shop-girl and
arrived home before dusk, to Mrs. Zapp's straitened approval.

Dusk made incantations in his third-floor-front. Pleasantly
fagged in those slight neat legs, after his walk, Mr. Wrenn sat
in the wicker rocker by the window, patting his scrubby tan
mustache and reviewing the day's wandering. When the gas was
lighted he yearned over pictures in a geographical magazine for
a happy hour, then yawned to himself, "Well-l-l, Willum, guess
it's time to crawl into the downy."