For the next week or two Nicholson and his colleagues had their hands full. He himself tapped the mail-bags at the post office, making thereby many important discoveries in the shape of treasonable correspondence, and saw to the prompt checking of seditious reports, such as that issued by the Mohammedan editor of a native paper, who went to prison for his pains. The raising of the native levies, to his disappointment, proceeded slowly. Most of the border chieftains were waiting to "see how the cat jumped," to put it figuratively, and both Edwardes and Nicholson were kept hard at work exerting their influence with the _maliks_ of the various villages. After the news that Delhi had fallen to the mutineers came an alarming report of a fresh outbreak at Nowshera, only a few miles away. In the face of this development, the two friends came to the conclusion that the sepoys at Peshawur must be disarmed. They carried their arguments at once to Sydney Cotton, and convinced the Brigadier of the necessity for such drastic action. This decision was arrived at in the small hours of the 22nd of May. By six o'clock the same morning the colonels of the sepoy regiments had received their orders, and by seven the work of disarmament had begun. "These prompt and decided measures," notes Edwardes, "took the native troops completely aback. Not an hour had been given them to consult, and, isolated from each other, no regiment was willing to commit itself; the whole laid down their arms." The same writer records how, as the muskets and sabres of "once-honoured corps" were thrown unceremoniously into carts, there were to be seen here and there the spurs and swords of British officers who had vouched for the loyalty of their men, and who still refused to believe them traitorous. Very soon after were these simple gentlemen to have their faith rudely shattered. It was a dramatic scene, but to Nicholson, if to none other, it was not painful. Too well did he know how the seeds of rebellion had been sown in these same regiments. The next day Nicholson was called upon for immediate active service. The 55th Sepoys at Mardan had mutinied and taken to the hills. At the head of a strong body of cavalry and infantry he hurled himself on the track of the rebels, and then began a fierce pursuit that gave the fleeing sepoys no respite. Up hill and down dale they were hunted, until at last nearly three hundred had been killed or taken prisoners, together with a large quantity of arms. The rest, it may be mentioned, fell into the unfriendly hands of the hill tribes across the border, and suffered either death or slavery. Not a man is known to have escaped.