CHAPTER XXVII.
"Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven ?--that dark red smoke Blotting the silver moon ?...
Hark to that roar whose swift and deafening peals, In countless echoes, through the mountains ring, Startling pale midnight on her starry throne! * * * * * Loud and more loud, the discord grows, Till pale Death shuts the scene, And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws His cold and bloody shroud." SHELLEY.
The 6th of March rose dark and lowering, and all nature wore an aspect meet for the horrors which that day chronicled in the page of history.

Toward noon the dense leaden cloud floated off, as though the uncertainty which veiled the future had suddenly been lifted--the crisis had come.

Santa Anna and his bloodthirsty horde, rendered more savage by the recollection of the 11th December, poured out the vial of their wrath on the doomed town.

Oh! San Antonio, thou art too beautiful for strife and discord to mar thy quiet loveliness.

Yet the fiery breath of desolating war swept rudely o'er thee, and, alas! thou wast sorely scathed.
A second time the ill-fated fortress was fiercely charged.