ed to be driven to their work. Every
one was alert and at his post, and they met with a hot fire from cannon
and rifles the Mexican advance. Just as the new day dawned, the ladders
were placed against the walls and the Mexicans scrambled up their
rounds. They were driven back with heavy loss. Again the charge for
assault was sounded and a second rush was made for the walls, and once
more the bullets of the defenders swept the field and the assailants
fell back in dismay.

Santa Anna now went through the beaten ranks with threats and promises,
seeking to inspire his men with new courage, and again they rushed
forward on all sides of the fort. Many of the Texans had fallen and all
of them were exhausted. It was impossible to defend the whole circle of
the walls. The assailants who first reached the tops of the ladders
were hurled to the ground, but hundreds rushed in to take their places,
and at a dozen points they clambered over the walls. It was no longer
possible for the handful of survivors to keep them back.

In a few minutes the fort seemed full of assailants. The Texans
continued to fight with unflinching courage. When their rifles were
emptied they used them as clubs and struggled on till overwhelmed by
numbers. Near the western wall of the fort stood Travis, in the corner
near the church stood Crockett, both fighting like Homeric heroes. Old
Betsy had done an ample share of work that fatal night. Now, used as a
club, it added nobly to its record. The two heroes at length fell, but
around each was a heap of slain.

Colonel Bowie had taken no part in the fight, having been for some days
sick in bed. He was there butchered and mutilated. All others who were
unable to fight met the same fate. It had been proposed to blow up the
magazine, but Major Evans, the man selected for this duty, was shot as
he attempted to perform it. The struggle did not end while a man of the
garrison was alive, the only survivors being two Mexican women, Mrs.
Dickenson (wife of one of the defenders) and her child, and the negro
servant of Colonel Travis. As for the dead Texans, their bodies were
brutally mutilated and then thrown into heaps and burned.

Thus fell the Alamo. Thus did the gallant Travis and his men keep their
pledge of "victory or death." Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, the
heroes of the Alamo did not retreat or ask for quarter, but lay where
they had stood in obedience to their country's commands. And before and
around