Further conversation was cut short by the arrival of a messenger summoning Desmond to attend the colonel.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“Under a clump of trees beyond the camp, sir.  He’s been there by himself an hour or more.”

Desmond hurried off.  On the way he met Major Coote.

“Hullo, Burke,” cried the major; “you’ve heard the news?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry for it.”

“All smoke, my dear boy, all smoke.  Colonel Clive has been thinking it over, and has decided to disregard the decision of the Council and cross the river at sunrise tomorrow.”

Desmond could not refrain from flinging up his hat and performing other antics expressive of delight; he was caught in the act by Clive himself, who was returning to his tent.

“You’re a madcap, Burke,” he said.  “Come to my tent.”

He employed Desmond during the next hour in writing orders to the officers of his force.  This consisted of about nine hundred Europeans, two hundred Topasses, a few lascars, and some two thousand Sepoys.  Eight six-pounders and two howitzers formed the whole of the artillery.  Among the Europeans were about fifty sailors, some from the king’s ships, some from merchantmen.  Among the latter were Mr. Toley and Bulger, whose excellent service in capturing the Good Intent had enforced their request to be allowed to accompany the little army.

Shortly before dawn on June twenty-second Clive’s men began to cross the river.  The passage being made in safety, they rested during the hot hours, and resumed their march in the evening amid a heavy storm of rain, often having to wade waist-high the flooded fields.  Soon after midnight the men, drenched to the skin, reached a mango grove somewhat north of the village of Plassey:  and there, as they lay down in discomfort to snatch a brief sleep before dawn, they heard the sound of tom toms and trumpets from the Nawab’s camp three miles away.

“’Tis a real comfort, that there noise,” remarked Bulger as he stirred his campfire with his hook.  Desmond had come to bid him good night.  “Ay, true comfort to a sea-goin’ man like me.  For why?  ’Cos it makes me feel at home.  Why, I don’t sleep easy if there en’t some sort o’ hullabaloo—­wind or wave, or, if ashore, cats a-caterwaulin’.  No, Mr. Subah, Nawab, or whatsomdever you call yourself, you won’t frighten Bill Bulger with your tum-tum-tumin’.  I may be wrong, Mr. Burke, which I never am, but there’ll be tum-tum-tum of another sort tomorrer.”

The grove held by Clive’s troops was known as the Laksha Bagh—­the grove of a hundred thousand trees.  It was nearly half a mile long and three hundred yards broad.  A high embankment ran all round it, and beyond this a weedy ditch formed an additional protection against assault.  A little north of the grove, on the bank of the river Cossimbazar, stood a stone hunting box belonging to Sirajuddaula.  Still farther north, near the river, was a quadrangular tank, and beyond this a redoubt and a mound of earth.  The river there makes a loop somewhat like a horseshoe in shape, and in the neck of land between the curves of the stream the Nawab had placed his intrenched camp.