forced 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.

His army numbered nearly seventy thousand men, of whom fifty thousand
were infantry, armed with matchlocks, bows and arrows, pikes and swords.
He had in all fifty-three guns, mounted on platforms drawn by elephants
and oxen. The most efficient part of his artillery was commanded by
Monsieur Sinfray, who had under him some fifty Frenchmen from
Chandernagore. The Nawab's vanguard consisted of fifteen thousand men
under his most trusty lieutenants, including Manik Chand and Mir Madan.
Rai Durlabh, the captor of Cossimbazar, and two other officers commanded
separate divisions.

Dawn had hardly broken