How completely all this and what followed was the work of one man, and one only is eloquently shown by the pronouncement of old Morari Row to the effect that the English who followed Clive must be of quite a different tribe or breed to those who followed anybody else, and further by the fact that he inflicted two decisive defeats upon the French at Covelong and Chingleput, with a force consisting of five hundred raw Sepoy levies, and two hundred newly-imported scourings of the London slums, who had so little of the soldier in them that when a shot killed one in the first skirmish all the rest turned round and ran away; while on another occasion the report of a cannon so frightened the sentries that they all left their posts, and one of them was discovered occupying a strategic position at the bottom of a well! And yet Clive, somehow, made steady, disciplined soldiers out of this miserable rabble, and, though at last he was so ill that he could hardly stand, led them to victory and turned the French out of their forts--which was perhaps a miracle even greater than the making of Cromwell’s Ironsides. After this the young man, having well earned a holiday, got married and came home for his honeymoon. He was at once hailed as the saviour of India--or at any rate of the East India Company, the directors of which drained many a good bottle of port to the toast of “General” Clive; and even his father half incredulously admitted that “after all it seemed that the booby had something in him.” But “the booby,” who had come back moderately rich, bore no malice, and at once began to repair the evil of his youth by paying off all the debts of his family. He then proceeded to waste his substance and his time by getting into Parliament and getting turned out again on petition, after which he very properly went back to India to do work that parliamentary orators couldn’t do. His first exploit was the reduction of the pirate stronghold of Gheriah, which had long dominated the whole Arabian Gulf, the next was the Avenging of one of the blackest crimes in history. There is no need to tell of it here, for is not the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta deep-graven in the memory of every man and woman, boy and girl, of Anglo-Saxon blood? Forty-eight hours after the news reached Madras Clive was given the command of nine hundred British infantry and fifteen hundred Sepoys, and with this army, supported by a fleet under Admiral Watson, he marched to the conquest of an empire half as large as Europe.