The Struggle fur Independence, r835-r836
a hush more appalling than the heavy cannonade had been. After the uproar of the last nine days, the silence became depressing too, and ominous for the garrison. The quiet of the interminably long night brought on an involuntary but weary sleep. Even the guards fell asleep at their posts. About an hour before dawn on March 6 the assault was launched in almost complete silence. The three pickets standing guard outside the walls to warn the garrison were surprised by the stealthy advance. But the accidental discharge of a rifle and the sudden hurrahs of the Mexicans as they came within a hundred yards of the walls brought the Texans to their feet with a start. Travis, followed by his slave boy, spreading the alarm as he went, rushed to a cannon on the north- east corner of the wall. A single bugle note, sharp and shrill, rent the stillness of early dawn. Then, above the din of battle, rose the fatal DegueUo, the call for no quarter. As a driving hailstorm levels fields of grain, so the belching and blazing guns mowed down the columns of the attackers. On they came, to the very walls. Twice the scaling ladders were placed against the walls and twice they were pushed off the ramparts. Again the lines reformed, and advanced relentlessly for the third time upon the exhausted defenders. The Mexicans successfully scaled the walls and poured over the ramparts. Hand-to-hand combat ensued. Steel clashed with steel. Bodies fell with a dull thud. Blood gushed from gaping wounds. Quarter was neither asked nor given. The unequal struggle ended in the chapel where the women and children had been placed for protection. The light of dawn was breaking over the horizon as the Texans, fighting every inch of the way, retreated from the west wall to the long barracks and the church. Major Robert Evans made a dash to set fire to the powder magazine, but was shot down just as he gained the chapel door, Bowie, delirious with fever, sprang from his cot, only to be pierced by the onrushing bayonets. The women screamed and the children cried, as Jacob Walker, a wounded gunner from Nacog- doches, crawled to the feet of Mrs. Dickenson. His plea for mercy was unheeded. The carnage ended abruptly. The three-hour attack stopped almost as suddenly as it had started. There were no visible survivors except the women, the children, and two Negro slaves. A thorough search of the blood-bespattered fortress was made, and five men were brought out into
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