11 o’clock
Peter Mangrove cheered -- Sneezer barked and yelled at a glorious rate , and could scarcely be held in the canoe -- and looking overboard , we saw the monster , twelve feet long at least , upturn his white belly to the rising moon , struggle for a moment with his short paws , and after a solitary heavy lash of his scaly tale , he floated away astern of us , dead and still . To proceed poor Peter Mangrove , whose nerves were consumedly shaken by this interlude , was seized during the night with a roasting fever , brought on in a great measure , I believe , by fear , at finding himself so far out of his latitude ; and that he had grievous doubts as to the issue of our voyage , and as to where we were bound for , was abundantly evident . I dosed him most copiously with salt water , a very cooling medicine , and no lack of it at hand . We weighed at grey dawn , on the morning of the 15th , and at 11 o'clock , AM arrived at Chagres , a more miserable place , were that credible , even than Porto -- Bello . The eastern side of the harbour is formed by a small promontory that runs out into the sea about five hundred yards , with a bright little bay to windward ; while a long muddy mangrove-covered spit forms the right hand bank as you enter the mouth or estuary of the river Chagres on the west . The easternmost bluff is a narrow saddle , with a fort erected on the extreme point facing the sea , which , so far as situation is concerned , is , or ought to be , impregnable , the rock being precipitous on three faces , while it is cut off to landward by a deep dry ditch , about thirty feet wide , across which a movable drawbridge is let down , and this compartment of the defences is all very regular , with scarp and counterscarp , covered -- way and glacis . The brass guns mounted on the castle were numerous and beautiful , but every thing was in miserable disrepair ; several of the guns , for instance , had settled down bodily on the platform , having fallen through the crushed rotten carriages .