“Tordenskjold,” was the reply, “come to teach you to keep awake.”

It proved impossible to warp the ships out.  Only one of the seven lost ones was recovered; all the rest were set on fire.  By the light of the mighty bonfire Tordenskjold rowed out with his men, hauling the recovered ship right under the guns of the forts, the Danish flag flying at the bow of his boat.  He had not lost a single man.  A cannon-ball swept away all the oars on one side of his boat, but no one was hurt.

At Marstrand they had been up all night listening to the cannonading and the crash upon crash as the big ships blew up.  They knew that Tordenskjold was abroad with his men.  In the morning, when they were all in church, he walked in and sat down by his chief, the old Admiral Judicher, who was a slow-going, cautious man.  He whispered anxiously, “What news?” but Tordenskjold only shrugged his shoulders with unmoved face.  It is not likely that either the old Admiral or the congregation heard much of that sermon, if indeed they heard any of it.  But when it was over, they saw from the walls of the town the Danish ships at anchor and heard the story of the last of Tordenskjold’s exploits.  It fitly capped the climax of his life.  Sweden’s entire force on the North Sea, with the exception of five small galleys, had either been captured, sunk, or burned by him.

The King would not let Tordenskjold go when peace was made, but he had his way in the end.  To his undoing he consented to take with him abroad a young scalawag, the son of his landlord, who had more money than brains.  In Hamburg the young man fell in with a gambler, a Swedish colonel by name of Stahl, who fleeced him of all he had and much more besides.  When Tordenskjold heard of it and met the Colonel in another man’s house, he caned him soundly and threw him out in the street.  For this he was challenged, but refused to fight a gambler.

“Friends,” particularly one Colonel Muennichhausen, who volunteered to be his second, talked him over, and also persuaded him to give up the pistol, with which he was an expert.  The duel was fought at the Village of Gledinge, over the line from Hanover, on the morning of November 12, 1720.  Tordenskjold was roused from sleep at five, and, after saying his prayers, a duty he never on any account omitted, he started for the place appointed.  His old body-servant vainly pleaded with his master to take his stout blade instead of the flimsy parade sword the Admiral carried.  Muennichhausen advised against it; it would be too heavy, he said.  Stahl’s weapon was a long fighting rapier, and to this the treacherous second made no objection.  Almost at the first thrust he ran the Admiral through.  The seconds held his servant while Stahl jumped on his horse and galloped away.  Tordenskjold breathed out his dauntless soul in the arms of his faithful servant and friend.