cannonade was heard above the fort, carrying consternation into the city, for the inhabitants believed that it had fallen. It soon ceased, however. Several barges, loaded with troops, had passed the fort unobserved, and attempted to land and take it in rear. Pulling to the shore with loud shouts, they were met by a well-directed fire from a battery, and compelled to seek shelter under their ships. During this tremendous bombardment Francis Key lay in a little vessel under the Admiral's frigate. He had visited him for the purpose of obtaining an exchange of some prisoners of war, especially of one who was a personal friend, and was directed to remain till after the action. During the day his eye had rested eagerly on that low fortification, over which the flag of his country was flying, and he watched with the intensest anxiety the progress of each shell in its flight, rejoicing when it fell short of its aim, and filled with fear as he saw it stooping without exploding, within those silent enclosures. At night, when darkness shut out that object of so much and intense interest, around which every hope and desire of his life seemed to cling, he still stood straining his eyes through the gloom, to catch, if he could, by the light of the blazing shells, a glimpse of his country's flag, waving proudly in the storm. The early dawn found him still a watcher, and there, to the music of bursting shells, and the roar of cannon, he composed "The Star-Spangled Banner."[6] [Footnote 6: The scene and the occasion which called forth this beautiful ode, have helped to make it a national one. It requires but little imagination to conceive the intense and thrilling anxiety with which a true patriot would look for the first gray streak of morning, to see if the flag of his country was still flying, while the heart involuntarily asks the question-- "O, say, can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming-- And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses; Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected, now shines in the stream? 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O, long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."]