'This time tomorrow,' Meer Allum said in his odd English accent, 'we shall all dine in the Tippoo's palace. Drink from his silver and eat from his gold.'

'I pray that we do,' Harris said, 'and I pray we manage it without grievous loss.' He scratched his old wound beneath his wig.

The officers were still sombre when the meal ended. Harris bade them a good night, then stood for a while outside his tent staring at the moon-glossed walls of the distant city. The lime-washed ramparts seemed to glow white, beckoning him, but to what? He went to his bed where he slept badly and, in his waking moments, found himself rehearsing excuses for failure. Baird also stayed awake for a while, but drank a good measure of whisky and, afterwards, in full uniform and with his big claymore propped beside his cot, he slipped in and out of a restless sleep. Wellesley slept well. The men crammed in the trenches hardly slept at all.

Bugles greeted the dawn. The storm clouds had thickened in the west, but there was no rain, and the rising sun soon burned the small wispy clouds from above the city. The assaulting troops crouched in the trenches where they could not be seen from Seringapatam's walls. The small white flags fluttered in the river. The siege guns kept firing, some attempting to open the breach wider, but most just trying to discourage the defenders from making any attempt to repair the breach or place obstacles on its forward slope. The undamaged ramparts gleamed white in the sun, while the breach appeared as a red-brown scar in the long city wall.

The Tippoo had spent the night in a small sentry shelter on the north walls. He woke early for he expected an attack at dawn and he had ordered that all his soldiers should be ready on the walls, but no assault came and, as the sun climbed higher, he allowed some of the defenders back to their barracks to rest while he himself went to the Inner Palace. He sensed a nervous expectancy in the crowded streets, and he himself was a troubled man for during his restless night he had dreamed of monkeys, and monkeys were ever a bad omen, and the Tippoo's mood was not helped when his diviners reported that the oil in their pots had been clouded. Today, it seemed, was an inauspicious day, but luck, as the Tippoo knew, was malleable and he attempted to change the day's ill-starred beginning by giving gifts. He summoned a Hindu priest and presented the man with an elephant, a sack of oilseed and a purse of gold. To the Brahmins who accompanied the priest he gave a bullock, a nanny goat, two buffalo, a black hat, a black coat and one of his precious pots of divining oil. Then he washed his hands and donned a cloth-padded war helmet that had been dipped in a sacred fountain to make its wearer invulnerable. On his right arm, his sword arm, he wore a silver amulet inscribed with verses from the Koran. A servant pinned the great red ruby onto the helmet's plume, the Tippoo slung the gold-hilted sword at his waist, then went back to the western walls.

Nothing had changed. Beyond the gently flowing South Cauvery the sun baked the ground where the British guns still fired. Their massive round shots churned up the rubble ramp, but no redcoats stirred from their trenches and the only signs that an assault might be imminent were the small pennants stuck in the riverbed.

'They want another day to widen the breach,' an officer opined.

Colonel Gudin shook his head. 'They'll come today,' he insisted.

The Tippoo grunted. He was standing just north of the breach from where he watched the enemy trenches through a spyglass. Some of the British round shot struck dangerously close to where he stood, and his aides tried to persuade him to move to a safer place, but even when a stone shard thrown up by a cannonball flicked at his white linen tunic, he would not move. 'They would have come at dawn,' he finally said, 'if they were coming today.'

'They want us to think that,' Gudin protested, 'to lull us. But they will come today. They won't give us another night to make preparations. And why plant the flags?' He pointed at the river.

The Tippoo stepped back from the remains of the parapet. Was his luck changed? He had given gifts to the enemies of his God in the hope that his God would then reward him with victory, but he still felt an unease. He would much have preferred that the storming should be delayed another day so that another set of auspices could be taken, but perhaps Allah willed it otherwise. And nothing would be lost by assuming that the attack would come this day. 'Assume they will come this afternoon,' he ordered. 'Every man back to the walls.'

The walls, already thick with troops, now became crowded with defenders. One company of Muslims had volunteered to face the first enemy who came into the breach and those brave men, armed with swords, pistols and muskets, crouched just inside the breach, but hidden from the enemy's guns by the mound of rubble. Those volunteers would almost certainly die, if not at the hands of the attackers then when the great mine blew, but each man had been assured of his place in paradise and so they went gladly to their deaths. Rockets were piled on the ramparts, and guns that had stayed hidden from the bombardment were manhandled into position to take the attackers in the flanks.

Others of the Tippoo's finest troops were posted on the outer wall above the edges of the breach. Their job was to defend the shoulders of the breach, for the Tippoo was determined to funnel the attackers into the space between the walls where his mine could destroy them. Let the British come, the Tippoo prayed, but let them be shepherded across the breach and into the killing ground.

The Tippoo had decided to lead the fight on the wall north of the breach. Colonel Gudin's battalion would fight south of the breach, but Gudin himself had responsibility for blowing the great mine. It was ready now, a hoard of powder crammed into the old gate passage and shored up by stones and timber so that the blast of the explosion would be forced northwards between the walls. Gudin would watch the killing space from his place on the inner rampart, then signal to Sergeant Rothiere to light the fuse. Rothiere and the fuse were guarded by two of Gudin's steadiest men and by six of the Tippoo's jettis.

The Tippoo assured himself that all had been done that could be done. The city was ready and, in honour of the slaughter of infidels, the Tippoo had arrayed himself in jewels, then consigned his soul and his kingdom into Allah's keeping. Now he could only wait as the late-morning sun climbed higher and yet higher to become a burning whiteness in the Indian sky where the vultures circled on their wide ragged wings.

The British guns fired on. In the mosque some men prayed, but all of them were old men, for any man young enough to fight was waiting on the walls. The Hindus prayed to their gods while the women of the city made themselves ragged and dirty so that, should the city fall, they would not attract the enemy's attention.

Midday came. The city baked in the heat. It seemed strangely silent, for the fire of the siege guns was desultory now. The sound of each shot echoed dully from the walls and each strike would start a trickle of stone and a small cloud of dust and afterwards there would be silence again.

On the walls a horde of men crouched behind their firesteps, while in the trenches across the river an opposing horde waited for the order that would send them against an expectant city.

The Tippoo had a prayer mat brought to the walls and there, facing towards the enemy, he knelt and bowed in prayer. He prayed that Colonel Gudin was wrong and that his enemies would give him one more day, and then, as in a waking dream, a message came to him. He had given gifts, and gifts of charity were blessed, but he had not made sacrifice. He had been saving his sacrifice for the celebration of victory, but perhaps victory would not come unless he made his offerings now. Luck was malleable, and death was a great changer of fortune. He made a last obeisance, touching his forehead to the mat's weave, then climbed to his feet. 'Send for three jettis,' he ordered an aide, 'and tell them to bring me the British prisoners.'