A few days more, and we were steaming out to the Bocas--which we had begun to love as the gates of a new home--heaped with presents to the last minute, some of them from persons we hardly knew.

Behind us Port of Spain sank into haze: before us Monos rose, tall, dark, and grim-- if Monos could be grim--in moonless night.

We ran on, and past the island; this time we were going, not through the Boca de Monos, but through the next, the Umbrella Bocas.

It was too dark to see houses, palm-trees, aught but the ragged outline of the hills against the northern sky, and beneath, sparks of light in sheltered coves, some of which were already, to one of us, well-beloved nooks.

There was the great gulf of the Boca de Monos.