8 AM
-- `` No ! '' -- `` Too true , too true . '' So no help for it , I took a sad farewell of my friends , received my orders , laid in my provisions and water , hauled out into the fairway , and sailed for Santa Martha next morning at daybreak , with three merchant schooners under convoy one for Santa Martha -- another for Carthagena -- and the third for Porto-Bello . We sailed on the 24th of such a month , and , after a pleasant passage , anchored at Santa Martha , at 8 AM , on the 31st . When we came to anchor , we saluted , which seemed to have been a somewhat unexpected honour , as the return was fired from the fort after a most primitive fashion . A black fellow appeared with a shovel of live embers , one of which another sans culotte caught up in his hand , chucking it from one palm to another , until he ran to the breech of the first gun , where , clapping it on the touch-hole , he fired it off , and so on seriatim , through the whole battery , until the required number of guns were given , several of which , by the by , were shotted , as we could hear the balls whiz overhead . The town lies on a small plain , at the foot of very high mountains , or rather on a sand-bank , formed from the washings from these mountains .