John Nicholson | Page 7

closing the gates against him. Leaping from his horse, and
striding boldly among them, Nicholson ordered the Sikh soldiers to
arrest their leaders. For a moment they wavered, and the young officer's
life hung in the balance. But no one dared fire the shot which would
have turned the scale for mutiny.

"Seize those men!" commanded Nicholson fiercely, as he pointed out
the ringleaders. And, impressed by his resolute bearing, as he towered
above them with grim determination written on his face, the soldiers
did as he ordered, whereupon he placed the prisoners in fetters and
made arrangements for the security of the fort.
It was a daring and characteristic piece of work, made all the more
noteworthy by the fact that Nicholson was almost alone when he leapt
thus upon the mutineers. In his fiery impatience he had outdistanced his
escort of sixty horsemen, only a handful of these being able to keep up
with him to the end. The infantry, he noted in his report, did not arrive
until midnight.
Such a swift blow at their plans as this was not without its lesson to the
Sikhs, and the name of "Nikalseyn" from that time began to assume a
terrible significance in their minds.

[1] Killed at the battle of Ferozeshah.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SECOND SIKH WAR.
The capture of Attock effected, there still remained much to be done in
the immediate neighbourhood. Chuttur Singh's Hazara forces were
moving about with the intention of joining the main army under
another Sikh leader, Shere Singh. With his newly raised troop of 700
levies Nicholson dashed hither and thither, striking heavy blows at the
scattered portions of the enemy whom he encountered and damping the
ardour of other tribesmen who had thoughts of swelling the numbers of
the rebels.
Hasan Abdal received one of these sudden and unexpected visits. Here
a body of Sikh horse had mutinied and expelled their commander from
the fort. Nicholson promptly paraded the garrison, placing the
ringleaders under arrest, as he had done at Attock. In this instance,

however, he thought it better policy to show some leniency. When the
Sikhs begged hard for forgiveness he granted it, wishing to show that
he was "not entirely without confidence in them."
Almost immediately after this incident he learned that a Sikh regiment
of some strength, with two guns, was at Rawal Pindi on its way to meet
Chuttur Singh's army. By a quick march he intercepted the rebels at a
place called Jani-ka-sang, near the Margalla Pass. The mutineers had
taken up a strong position within the walls of a cemetery, and if it came
to a fight in the open the advantage lay entirely on their side.
Nicholson made up his mind quickly as to his course of action.
Concealing his men in a piece of jungle, he called out the colonel of the
disaffected regiment and gave him half an hour in which to decide
whether he would surrender or be attacked. What Nicholson would
have actually done had the Sikh commander remained obdurate is a
question; possibly he would have risked a dash across the open ground
in front of the cemetery walls and taken the chance of his men facing
the rebels' fire or turning tail. But he was spared such a crucial test.
Before the half-hour was up the Sikh colonel reappeared to announce
that he and his men regretted their disobedience, and were ready to
place themselves at his service.
Once more Nicholson's reputation for fearlessness had won him a
bloodless victory. Having read them a severe lecture, he dismissed the
mutineers with no further punishment, and sent them off to Rawal
Pindi.
From now on Nicholson was busy scouring the country round Hasan
Abdal, reducing Chuttur Singh's chances of increasing his army as far
as was possible. Wherever mutiny reared its head, there was the young
lieutenant with his troop of irregulars ready to crush it at once with a
stern hand. There was no temporising with him. He held much the same
views at this time as some years later when, in reply to a lengthy
despatch from Sir Henry Lawrence calling upon him for a report of the
courts-martial he was holding and punishments he was inflicting, he
wrote on the other side of the document in large letters: "The
punishment of mutiny is death."

By September 1848 Chuttur Singh, with several regular regiments and
nearly a score of field-pieces, was making a determined forward
movement. There was also another but smaller force in the field led by
a son of the Sikh chief. When Nicholson learned that the latter body
was endeavouring to join the main army he made a bold attempt to cut
it off, and started off post-haste for the Margalla Pass. At this spot,
through