yet hung a banner on which was written in great letters the
word, "Texas."

The Mexican troops were coming close now. The bands playing the Deguelo
swelled to greater volume and the ground shook again as the Mexican
artillery fired its second volley. When the smoke drifted away again the
Alamo itself suddenly burst into flame. The Texan cannon at close range
poured their shot and shell into the dense ranks of the Mexicans. But
piercing through the heavy thud of the cannon came the shriller and more
deadly crackle of the rifles. The Texans were there, every one of them,
on the walls. He might have known it. Nothing on earth could catch them
asleep, nor could anything on earth or under it frighten them into
laying down their arms.

Ned began to shout, but only hoarse cries came from a dry throat through
dry lips. The great pulses in his throat were leaping again, and he was
saying: "The Texans! The Texans! Oh, the brave Texans!"

But nobody heard him. Santa Anna, Filisola, Castrillon, Tolsa, Gaona and
the other generals were leaning against the earthwork, absorbed in the
tremendous spectacle that was passing before them. The soldiers who were
to guard the prisoner forgot him and they, too, were engrossed in the
terrible and thrilling panorama of war. Ned might have walked away, no
one noticing, but he, too, had but one thought, and that was the Alamo.

He saw the Mexican columns shiver when the first volley was poured upon
them from the walls. In a single glance aside he beheld the exultant
look on the faces of Santa Anna and his generals die away, and he
suddenly became conscious that the shrill shouting on the flat roofs of
the houses had ceased. But the Mexican cannon still poured a cloud of
shot and shell over the heads of their men at the Alamo, and the troops
went on.

Ned, keen of ear and so intent that he missed nothing, could now
separate the two fires. The crackle of the rifles which came from the
Alamo dominated. Rapid, steady, incessant, it beat heavily upon the
hearing and nerves. Pyramids and spires of smoke arose, drifted and
arose again. In the intervals he saw the walls of the church a sheet of
flame, and he saw the Mexicans falling by dozens and scores upon the
plain. He knew that at the short range the Texan rifles never missed,
and that the hail of their bullets was cutting through the Mexican ranks
like a fire through dry grass.

"God, how they fight!" he heard one of the generals--he never kne