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 which he knew the rebel troops would be compelled to march, was
a formidable tower situated high up on the hillside. To gain entrance
to this it was necessary to clamber up to an opening in the outer wall
some ten feet from the ground, but Nicholson was not daunted by this.
It was most essential that the tower should be carried by storm and its
position held by his men.

Accordingly he led his troops to the assault in a mad rush that carried
the Pathans to the base of the tower before they could realise what a
foolhardy undertaking they were engaged upon. The rest of his men very
cowardly lagged behind. Then, no ladder being procurable, he set to
work to break down the wall, while from above the defenders rained down
a storm of stones upon them. One of these missiles hit Nicholson in
the face and knocked him over, but the wound was luckily not a severe
one.

In the end he was forced to fall back with his handful of men, the
tower being practically impregnable and a large body of Sikhs having
been observed marching to the relief of the garrison. But the vigour
of his attack had its moral effect. The Sikh soldiers, fearing that
the assault would be renewed next day, and that Nicholson would take
some terrible revenge upon them for their resistance, quietly stole
away under cover of the darkness, leaving him master of the situation!

It was somewhere about this time that the famous sect of Sikhs arose
which honoured Nicholson by elevating him to the rank of a deity. A
certain Hindu devotee in Hazara gave out that he had discovered in
"Nikalseyn" th