Now and then flames appeared above Sumter’s parapets; a geyser of white smoke suggested the fire had ignited a cache of gunpowder. At intervals small bright explosions burst from the smoke as well. “It was manifest that the flames, or heat, had reached a magazine of loaded shells and hand grenades,” Ruffin wrote. The fire gained ferocity as it moved eastward with the wind. “The only remaining buildings were consumed, and it seemed, to our outside view and inferences, that the whole area of the fort must have been so hot, and full of suffocating smoke, as to be intolerable to the garrison.”
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