Houston, to whom Travis addressed an urgent call for reinforcements, could do nothing. On the 3rd of March, with death staring the little garrison in the face, Travis sent a despatch to the Revolutionary committee, calmly stating his position, reiterating his determination never to surrender, and dwelling with almost impersonal interest on the beneficial effect to follow such determined resistance as he and his men were making. "I will do the best I can under the circumstances," he says, "and I feel confident that the determined valour and desperate courage heretofore evinced by my men will not fail them in the last struggle; and although they may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy, the victory will cost the enemy so dear that it will be worse for him than a defeat."
Day by day the toils were drawn closer around the doomed walls. Day by day the little garrison was thinned by wounds and sickness. Vainly they gazed northward across the plain for the invoked aid. The hungry eye beheld only a long train of Mexican recruits hastening like vultures to the feast of blood. Once they were gladdened by the sight of a little band of countrymen spurring towards the walls. But they were no forerunners of a relieving army. Thirty-two gallant Texans threw themselves into the fort, cutting their way through the besiegers, simply and solely that they might fight with their comrades; that they might be found, living or dead, by the side of David Crockett and Barrett Travis. Each morning a dwindling garrison answered to the roll-call, and the thin ranks were stretched a little wider apart along the crumbling ramparts which it had needed thrice their numbers to defend. They husbanded their scanty stores. They never wasted a shot. During that long and terrible fortnight it is said that nearly ten victims fell to each American rifle. With a thousand of his men shot down, and trembling in baffled wrath, Santa Ana on the fourteenth day, ordered another general assault. His officers drove their men to the breach at the sword's point.
When the smoke of battle had rolled away there was silence in the Alamo. The dead and dying strewed the ground. Santa Ana entered the fort. On the rampart, dead at his post, lay the commander, Travis, shot through the head. Beside him was the body of a Mexican officer, pierced to the heart by the sword still clutched in the dead hero's hand. They found Bowie in his own room. He was sick in bed when they broke into it, but his trusty rifle was with him, and four Mexicans died before he was reached. A fifth fell across his dead body, pierced through and through by the terrible knife. At the door of the magazine they shot Evans, ere he could touch a match and wreak a Samson vengeance on the foe.