From where he sat Clay could count the bars of the iron fence in front of the grounds.But the boards that backed them prevented his forming any idea of the strength or the distribution of Mendoza's forces.He drew his staff of amateur officers to one side and explained the situation to them.
``The Theatre National and the Club Union,'' he said, ``face the Palace from the opposite corners of this street.You must get into them and barricade the windows and throw up some sort of shelter for yourselves along the edge of the roofs and drive the men behind that fence back to the Palace.Clear them away from the cannon first, and keep them away from it.I will be waiting in the street below.When you have driven them back, we will charge the gates and have it out with them in the gardens.The Third and Fourth regiments ought to take them in the rear about the same time.You will continue to pick them off from the roof.''
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.