LAST SIGHT OF MONOS. 295 



out to the Bocas which we had be^^un to love as the <^ates 

 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 Um- 

 brella 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 OTeat e^ulf of the Boca de Monos. There w^as Mor- 

 rison's our !:^ood Scotch host of seven weeks since ; and the 

 glasses were turned on it, to see, if possible, through the 

 dusk, the almond-tree and the coco-grove for the last time. 

 Ah, w^ell When we next meet, what will he be, and where ? 

 And where the handsome Creole wife, and the little brown 

 Cupid who danced all naked in the log canoe, till the white 

 gentlemen, swimming round, upset him ; and canoe, and boy, 

 and men rolled and splashed about like a shoal of seals at 

 play, beneath the cliff with the Seguines and Cereuses ; 

 while the ripple lapped the Moriche-nuts about the roots 

 of the Manchineel bush, and the skippers leaped and flashed 

 outside, like silver splinters ? And here, where we steamed 

 along, was the very spot where we had seen the shark's back- 



