The women of the village had converted a small open shed into a chapel, with an altar, on which were all the offerings they could make, a few candles, some bits of gilt paper and tinsel, a rude wooden cross and a wretched little chromo of the Virgin. Here, as we passed, we saw the women kneeling, for where else could they take their troubles! At last our Venezuelan experiences were a thing of the past, and we were homeward bound, leaving behind us the dear delightful never-know-what’s-going-to-happen life; and realizing, as our ship cut her way through the countless “knots” of dashing waves, that as Maximiliano had said with a shake of his head, when we laughingly asked him if he did not want to go with us, “_esta tan léjos_”—it is so far! * * * * * Much has happened at Guanoco since the days of our visit. Very soon after our departure, Castro fearing the smouldering revolutionary plots in Trinidad, ordered all the ports of eastern Venezuela closed. Later came the deadly bubonic plague sealing for many months all the ports of the unfortunate country. Then indeed trouble descended upon poor little Guanoco. It was an essentially non-agricultural part of the country. The one industry had been the digging of pitch, the company’s boat plying between Guanoco and Trinidad having brought all necessary supplies. Now with all communication cut off the people were in a piteous condition. [Illustration: FIG. 55. GUARAUNO INDIAN PAPOOSE.] In the revolution of the Wheel of Fate—which whirls so rapidly in Venezuela,—the Lugo family had been deposed and a new Venezuelan administrator appointed in their place. Having known the Lugos, I like to think that they would have been less heartless than their successor, who, so the report goes, sold what supplies there were to the starving people at cruelly exorbitant prices. No matter how much one may love Nature, one cannot help feeling how unmoved she is in the face of suffering. Human beings might starve and sicken and die at Guanoco, but the sunshine would be just as warm and glowing and the wind in the palm trees just as musical as ever. With the cutting off of communication between Venezuela and Trinidad, Captain Truxillo’s occupation was gone. The “Josefa Jacinta” no longer plied busily back and forth between Port of Spain and Maturin, driving a brisk trade in hammocks, groceries and hides; and so at last she passed from the possession of Captain Truxillo to that of some more prosperous trader who could afford to wait for the reopening of commerce. For a year our old Captain watched his little vessel guided out of the harbor of Port of Spain, with a strange hand at the helm, and a strange voice in command. Then one day she sailed away never to return—but to be run aground and lost on a desolate and lonely part of the Venezuelan coast.