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.
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