Having decided this in his own prudent mind, he gave his warriors orders to march, and no sooner did it transpire that their objective was the sorely beleaguered fortress of Arcot than Rajah Sahib came to the conclusion that he had got a harder nut between his teeth than his jaws could crack, and so he made overtures of peace in the true Oriental style--that is to say, he offered a huge bribe for an unconditional surrender, and accompanied the offer with a threat of general assault and subsequent extermination if the offer were refused. The young quill-driver’s reply was characteristic. “Tell Rajah Sahib,” he said to the envoy, “that I refuse his bribe with as much scorn as I receive his threat. Tell him also that his master and father is a usurper and his army a rabble, and bid him beware how he brings them into a breach defended by English soldiers.” Rajah Sahib declined the warning, and prepared for attack by making his fanatic followers gloriously drunk with bhang and ether assorted drugs. He also selected the day of a great Moslem festival for the assault, and enlisted the services of some elephants, whose heads he covered with spiked plates of iron, and these, when the attack was delivered, were driven against the gates to act as living battering-rams. But Clive had already foreseen that living battering-rams had the disadvantage of working both ways, and so the elephants were received with such a galling fire that, instead of charging the gates, they turned round and made lanes through the army behind them with distinctly demoralising effect. This was a bad beginning, but the end was worse. Clive acted not only as general-in-command, but also as an ordinary gunner, and he seems, moreover, to have pretty well filled all the posts between. He worked as hard as any soldier or Sepoy of them all. There were more weapons than men to use them, so the rear ranks loaded and primed the muskets, and passed them up to the front as fast as they could be fired, and Rajah Sahib speedily learnt what Clive had meant by a breach defended by English soldiers, for the fire was so fast and fierce that the more men that he sent into the breach the more stopped there--and that was about all there was in it from his point of view. Three times the onset was repeated, and three times the attacking swarms were mown down by the leaden hail-storm that swept the breach, and after the third time the Rajah and his merry men had had enough of it and retreated to their lines. [Illustration: INSTEAD OF CHARGING THEY TURNED ROUND AND MADE LANES THROUGH THE ARMY BEHIND THEM.] The night passed in anxious watching, every man in his place and every gun loaded, but their last shot had been fired and the morning light showed that Rajah Sahib and what was left of his army had found the work too much highly seasoned for their taste; that they had just run away, leaving all their guns, ammunition, and stores to be picked up by the victors at their leisure.