" 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.