The two supporting columns had already started on their roundabout way to the rear of the Palace. Clay gathered up his reins, and telling his men to keep close to the walls, started forward, his soldiers following on the sidewalks and leaving the middle of the street clear. As they reached a point a hundred yards below the Palace, a part of the wooden shield behind the fence was thrown down, there was a puff of white smoke and a report, and a cannon-ball struck the roof of a house which they were passing and sent the tiles clattering about their heads. But the men in the lead had already reached the stage-door of the theatre and were opposite one of the doors to the club. They drove these in with the butts of their rifles, and raced up the stairs of each of the deserted buildings until they reached the roof. Langham was swept by a weight of men across a stage, and jumped among the music racks in the orchestra. He caught a glimpse of the early morning sun shining on the tawdry hangings of the boxes and the exaggerated perspective of the scenery. He ran through corridors between two great statues of Comedy and Tragedy, and up a marble stair case to a lobby in which he saw the white faces about him multiplied in long mirrors, and so out to an iron balcony from which he looked down, panting and breathless, upon the Palace Gardens, swarming with soldiers and white with smoke. Men poured through the windows of the club opposite, dragging sofas and chairs out to the balcony and upon the flat roof. The men near him were tearing down the yellow silk curtains in the lobby and draping them along the railing of the balcony to better conceal their movements from the enemy below. Bullets spattered the stucco about their heads, and panes of glass broke suddenly and fell in glittering particles upon their shoulders. The firing had already begun from the roofs near them. Beyond the club and the theatre and far along the street on each side of the Palace the merchants were slamming the iron shutters of their shops, and men and women were running for refuge up the high steps of the church of Santa Maria. Others were gathered in black masses on the balconies and roofs of the more distant houses, where they stood outlined against the soft blue sky in gigantic silhouette. Their shouts of encouragement and anger carried clearly in the morning air, and spurred on the gladiators below to greater effort. In the Palace Gardens a line of Mendoza's men fought from behind the first barricade, while others dragged tables and bedding and chairs across the green terraces and tumbled them down to those below, who seized them and formed them into a second line of defence.
Two of the assistant engineers were kneeling at Langham's feet with the barrels of their rifles resting on the railing of the balcony. Their eyes had been trained for years to judge distances and to measure space, and they glanced along the sights of their rifles as though they were looking through the lens of a transit, and at each report their faces grew more earnest and their lips pressed tighter together. One of them lowered his gun to light a cigarette, and Langham handed him his match-box, with a certain feeling of repugnance.
"Better get under cover, Mr. Langham," the man said, kindly. "There's no use our keeping your mines for you if you're not alive to enjoy them. Take a shot at that crew around the gun."
"I don't like this long range business," Langham answered. "I am going down to join Clay. I don't like the idea of hitting a man when he isn't looking at you."
The engineer gave an incredulous laugh.
"If he isn't looking at you, he's aiming at the man next to you. 'Live and let Live' doesn't apply at present."
As Langham reached Clay's side triumphant shouts arose from the roof-tops, and the men posted there stood up and showed themselves above the barricades and called to Clay that the cannon were deserted.
Kirkland had come prepared for the barricade, and, running across the street, fastened a dynamite cartridge to each gate post and lit the fuses. The soldiers scattered before him as he came leaping back, and in an instant later there was a racking roar, and the gates were pitched out of their sockets and thrown forward, and those in the street swept across them and surrounded the cannon.
Langham caught it by the throat as though it were human, and did not feel the hot metal burning the palms of his hands as he choked it and pointed its muzzle toward the Palace, while the others dragged at the spokes of the wheel. It was fighting at close range now, close enough to suit even Langham. He found himself in the front rank of it without knowing exactly how he got there. Every man on both sides was playing his own hand, and seemed to know exactly what to do. He felt neglected and very much alone, and was somewhat anxious lest his valor might be wasted through his not knowing how to put it to account. He saw the enemy in changing groups of scowling men, who seemed to eye him for an instant down the length of a gun-barrel and then disappear behind a puff of smoke. He kept thinking that war made men take strange liberties with their fellow-men, and it struck him as being most absurd that strangers should stand up and try to kill one another, men who had so little in common that they did not even know one another's names. The soldiers who were fighting on his own side were equally unknown to him, and he looked in vain for Clay. He saw MacWilliams for a moment through the smoke, jabbing at a jammed cartridge with his pen-knife, and hacking the lead away to make it slip. He was remonstrating with the gun and swearing at it exactly as though it were human, and as Langham ran toward him he threw it away and caught up another from the ground. Kneeling beside the wounded man who had dropped it and picking the cartridges from his belt, he assured him cheerfully that he was not so badly hurt as he thought.
"You all right?" Langham asked.