After the interruption of communication between the Punjab and Calcutta on the outbreak of the Mutinies, his position was altered by the force of events. Additional powers had not been delegated to him, indeed, by the Governor-General, but he was obliged to assume them in the series of emergencies which arose. He had to incur on his responsibility a vast outlay of money, and even to raise loans financially on the credit of the British Government, to enrol large bodies of Native soldiers, and appoint European officers from the regular troops to command them; to create, and allot salaries temporarily to, many new appointments--all which things lawfully required the authority of the Governor-General in Council, to whom, however, a reference was impossible during the disturbance. Again, he was obliged to make suggestions to the commanders of the regular troops at the various stations throughout the Province. These suggestions were usually accepted by them, and so had full effect. The commanders saw no alternative but to defer to him as he was the chief provincial authority, and as they were unable to refer to the Commander-in-Chief or to the Supreme Government. They also felt their normal obligation always to afford aid to him as representing the civil power in moments of need. Thus upon him was cast by rapid degrees the direction of all the British resources, civil, military and political, within the Punjab and its dependencies. This explanation is necessary, in order to illustrate the arduous part which he was compelled to take in the events about to be noticed. Thus can we gauge his responsibility for that ultimate result, which might be either the steadfast retention of a conquest won eight years previously, or a desolating disaster. From such a far-inland position the Europeans might, he knew, be driven towards their ships at the mouth of the Indus, but how many would ever reach the haven must be terribly doubtful. There he stood, then, at the head of affairs, like a tower raised aloft in the Land of the Five Rivers, with its basis tried by much concussion, but never shaken actually. He had, as shown in the last chapter, resources unequalled in any province of India. There were around him most, though not quite all, of the trusty coadjutors whom his brother Henry had originally collected, or whom he himself had summoned. His position during the crisis about to supervene, resembled that of the Roman Senate after the battle of Cannæ, as set forth by the historian with vivid imagery--“The single torrent joined by a hundred lesser streams has swelled into a wide flood; and the object of our interest is a rock, now islanded amid the waters, and against which they dash furiously, as though they must needs sweep it away. But the rock stands unshaken; the waters become feebler, the rock seems to rise higher and higher; and the danger is passed away.”