This cry, ringing clearly throughout the Alamo, aroused everybody to action, and hither and thither ran the soldiers to their various points of duty,—some in uniform, and others just as they had leaped up from their couches.
"Are they really coming?" demanded Henry Parker, who had been sleeping beside Dan, in one of the rooms of the convent.
"I reckon they are, Henry," was the quick response, and up leaped the youth, and ran, gun in hand, to where Poke Stover was doing guard duty.
"Are they coming, Poke?"
"Yes, Dan, and plenty of 'em, too. They are divided into several divisions."
There was no time to say more, for already one of the divisions, commanded by Colonel Duque, was attacking the northern wall. Here Lieutenant-Colonel Travis commanded in person. The commander was bareheaded, and carried a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other.
"Now, boys, give it to them hot!" he shouted. "Don't let them get over the wall. Fire to kill! Fire to save your own lives!" And then the cannon belched forth, followed by a crack-cracking of the smaller firearms. The aim of the Texans was so deadly that the column was repulsed for the moment, and Colonel Duque was seriously wounded.
By this time the divisions to attack the other sides of the mission had come up. As one column tried to raise their scaling-ladders, Davy Crockett threw his coonskin cap at them in defiance, and laid one of the officers low with a shot from his trusty "Betsy." Fifty other shots rang out, and the morning air became heavy with the smoke of rifles and cannon.
"We must beat 'em back!" cried Stover, who was close to Crockett, and as the old hunter blazed away so did the frontiersman and Dan, and the youth had the satisfaction of seeing the Mexican he had aimed at go down, rope and gun in hand, shot through the ankle.
The fighting was now incessant on all sides, but gradually the Mexicans concentrated on the northern wall. They were yelling like so many demons, and their officers urged them forward by threats and sword blows, until the first rank was fairly wedged against the stone wall of the mission. A cannon belched forth, doing fearful havoc, but those in front could not retreat because of those pushing behind them, and in a twinkle one Mexican soldier was piled above another, until the top of the wall was gained, and, as one authority states, they came "tumbling over it like sheep," falling, in some cases, directly on the bodies of the Texans below.