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Davis has worked out all new formulas for his birds, based on the current shortage of bananas. Melons and pumpkins are chopped up and so disguied that even the fruit pigeons are taking them readily. One big West Coast hornbill has a raucous call that sounds exactly like "Davis! Davis!" and keeps it up all morning until he is fed. Our old friend Jacob, from Piroe, is in a cage with several yellow-crested cockatoos, and they have all learned to say his name now. I went over to the cag e and called Jacob yesterday, and one of the sulphur-crested birds came right to the front and said "Jacob" to me. "Shame on you," I said, "you're not Jacob at all," and had little difficulty in picking out our pet, as he is the largest and handsomest of all our cockatoos.

All the gibbons (there are only six now, and we started with thirteen) know me, and begin to sing the moment they see me coming down the line with food. If I sit on the floor in front of the cage and start saying "Whoo - whoo - whoo" to them, they mimic me exactly. I call them my choir. One of them will sit and hold hands with me for hours at a time. The black and white boys from Bangkok decided today that they didn't care for oranges or bananas any longer - rather a strain on one's dietetic planning.

About eight-thirty we passed Gibraltar. It was too dark to see more than a cloud-like outline of the famous rock. Our sl gan for Davis and Jennier now is "Join the Zoo and see the world - by flashlight." We signalled ashore in Morse to let them know that the Silverash was passing Gibraltar, and the word could be passed on to Lloyd's that we were safely out of the war zone. We thought we had been pretty lucky to get by with nothing more than a warning of a floating mine, especially as we has seen one ship being towed into Morocco, under escort by a battleship; and [[strikethrough]] the captain [[/strikethrough]] had seen a grim reminder of a British oil tanker's fate when we sailed through a long stretch where the surface of the sea was rainbow-hued with floating oil. We were all in the little lounge, known as the "day-room", about ten o'clock, when we noticed powerful lights on deck, and went our to see what was up. A ship, with terrifically powerful search lights, was swiftly approaching us aft. When it was so close I thought it would hit us in a second more, it swerved, came along the port side, still very close, and playing that glaring head light all over our ship. The young red-headed apprentice ran like mad to the stern to fly our ensign, and from the bridge we heard the signal to the engine room "Stand By." Our strange visitor turned, swiftly and noiselessly, passed in back of us again, came up the starboard side, then wheeled and vanished into the night. It was an uncanny performance. Nobody could make out who she was, except that it was a cruiser, and the concensus of opinion was that she was a Spanish Insurgent battleship, for no [[strikethrough]] other [[/strikethrough]] ship of any other country would be so curious and so mysterious about it. A British battleship, checking up on passing ships, would have wirelessed or signalled in Morse. 

September 13 - 

Today we are well out in the Atlantic, and although it is cool, the weather is fine, and so far not too chilly for our animals on deck. We are taking the southern course on account of our perishable cargo, and will be south of the Azores, in fact wouth of the Gulf Stream all the way, until we cut north to make Halifax.