"Fellow citizens and compatriots," wrote Travis from the doomed Alamo Mission, to Houston and the other leaders outside, "I am besieged by a thousand or more Mexicans under Santa Ana. I have sustained a continued bombardment for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man.... The garrison is to be put to the sword if the place is taken. I have answered the summons with a cannon shot and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender, nor retreat. I call on you in the name of liberty, and of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all despatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily, and will no doubt increase to 3,000 or 4,000 in four or five days. Though this call may be neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who forgets not what is due to his own honor and that of his country--Victory or Death! W. Barrett Travis Lieut.-Col. Commanding." In the fort with Travis were 180 men under Bowie and Crockett. The siege began on Feb. 23, 1836, and ended on March 6th. Besides the frontiersmen in the fort were two women, two children and two slaves. The Mission was arranged in a great quadrangle fifty-four by 154 yards with _acequias_ or irrigation ditches both to front and rear. The garrison had succeeded in getting inside the walls about thirty bushels of corn and eighty beef cattle; so there was no danger of famine. The big courtyard was in the rear. The convent projected out in front of the courtyard. To the left angle of the convent was the chapel or Mission of the Alamo. Santa Ana had come across the desert with 5,000 men. To the demand for surrender, Travis answered with a cannon shot. The Mexican leader then hung the red flag above his camp and ordered the band to play "no quarter." For eight days, shells came hurtling inside the walls incessantly, dawn to dark, dark to dawn. Just at sunset on March 3rd, there was a bell. Travis collected his men and gave them their choice of surrendering and being shot, or cutting their way out through the besieging line. The besiegers at this time consisted of 2,500 infantrymen bunched close to the walls of the Alamo--too close to be shot from above, and 2,500 cavalry and infantry back on the Plaza and encircling the Mission to cut off all avenue of escape. Travis drew a line on the ground with his sword. "Every man who will die with me, come across that line! Who will be first? March!" Every man leaped over the line but Bowie, who was ill on a cot bed. "Boys, move my cot over the line," he said.