According to Sir Herbert Edwardes, it was the act of an English boy that saved the Punjaub. A very youthful operator—a mere lad—named Brendish, was by some accident alone in the Delhi Telegraph Office. When the Mutiny broke out he had to flee like the rest; but, before leaving, he wired a somewhat incoherent message to Umballa. “We must leave office,” it ran; “all the bungalows are on fire, burning down by the Sepoys of Meerut. They came in this morning.... Nine Europeans are killed.” That message reached Umballa, was sent on to Lahore, and was read there as a danger-signal so expressive, that the authorities at once decided to disarm the native troops at that station. The cryptic message was then flashed on to Peshawur, and was there read in the same sense, and acted upon with the same promptitude. Brendish was one of the few who afterwards escaped from Delhi. At some of the stations, where cool heads and steadfast courage prevailed, the Sepoys were disarmed with swiftness and decision. This was especially the case in the Punjaub, where the cause of England was upheld by the kingly brain of John Lawrence, the swift decision of Herbert Edwardes, and the iron courage of Neville Chamberlain and of John Nicholson. Lord Roberts has told how, on May 12, he was present as scribe at a council of war held in Peshawur. Round the table sat a cluster of gallant soldiers, such as might well take charge of the fortunes of a nation in the hour of its deadliest peril. Herbert Edwardes was there, and Neville Chamberlain, and Nicholson. They had to consider how to hold the Punjaub quiet while all Bengal was in a flame of mutiny. The Punjaub was a newly conquered province; its warlike population might well be expected to seize the first opportunity of rising against its conquerors. It was held by an army of over 80,000 troops, and of these only 15,000 were British—the rest, some 65,000, were almost sure to join the Mutiny. For every British soldier in the Punjaub, that is, there were four probable mutineers, while behind these was a warlike population, just subdued by the sword, and ready to rise again. But the cool heads that met in that council were equal to their task. It was resolved to disarm all doubtful regiments, and raise new forces in their stead in the Punjaub itself, and from its wild frontier clans. A movable column, light-footed, hard-hitting, was to be formed under Neville Chamberlain’s command, with which to smite at revolt whenever it lifted its head. So the famous Movable Column came into being, commanded in turn by Chamberlain and by Nicholson. That column itself had to be purged heroically again and again to cleanse it from mutinous elements, till it practically came to consist of one field-battery, one troop of horse-artillery, and one infantry regiment, all British. Then it played a great part in the wild scenes of the Mutiny.