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To this very day in Brazil we call the early morning the madrugada. The cock announces its approach to the waiting birds. The birds sing their sweetest songs at that hour and the morning star reigns in the sky as queen of the madrugada. When it was daylight again the three slaves crept home through the forests and jungles with their empty bag.

A speeding motor truck would have run him down long ago! As I left the ferry at Market Street I saw that the Norwegian steamer Taunton was unloading bananas at the Ericsson pier. Less than a month ago she picked up the survivors of the schooner Madrugada, torpedoed by a U-boat off Winter Bottom Shoal.

Then she called all the birds about her and said to them, "O, wonderful, sweet singing birds, henceforth I command you to sing your sweetest songs at this hour to herald the approach of day." The cock was standing by her side. "You," she said to him, "shall be appointed the watchman of the night. Your voice shall mark the watches of the night and shall warn the others that the madrugada comes."

On the Madrugada was a young friend of mine, a Dutch sailor, who told me of the disaster after he was landed in New York. To come unexpectedly on the ship that had rescued him seemed a great adventure. What a poem Walt Whitman could have made of it! It is a weakness of mine not a sinful one, I hope that whenever I see any one reading a book in public I am agog to find out what it is.