However, the opportunity came to him swiftly of “rightly benefiting” the King’s service.  After the battle of Kolberger Heide, that had gone against the Swedes, he found them beaching their ships under cover of the night to prevent their falling into the hands of the victors.  Wessel halted them with the threat that every man Jack in the fleet should be made to walk the plank, saved the ships, and took their admiral prisoner to his chief.  When others slept, Wessel was abroad with his swift sailer.  If wind and sea went against him, he knew how to turn his mishap to account.  Driven in under the hostile shore once, he took the opportunity, as was his wont, to get the lay of the land and of the enemy.  He learned quickly that in the harbor of Wesensoe, not far away, a Swedish cutter was lying with a Danish prize.  She carried eight guns and had a crew of thirty-six men; but though he had at the moment only eighteen sailors in his boat, he crept up the coast at once, slipped quietly in after sundown, and took ship and prize with a rush, killing and throwing overboard such as resisted.  In Sweden mothers hushed their crying children with his dreaded name; on the sea they came near to thinking him a troll, so sudden and unexpected were his onsets.  But there was no witchcraft about it.  He sailed swiftly because he was a skilled sailor and because he missed no opportunity to have the bottom of his ship scraped and greased.  And when on board, pistol and cutlass hung loose; for it was a time of war with a brave and relentless foe.

His reconnoitring expeditions he always headed himself, and sometimes he went alone.  Thus, when getting ready to take Marstrand, a fortified seaport of great importance to Charles, he went ashore disguised as a fisherman and peddled fish through the town, even in the very castle itself, where he took notice, along with the position of the guns and the strength of the garrison, of the fact that the commandant had two pretty daughters.  He was a sailor, sure enough.  Once when ashore on such an expedition, he was surprised by a company of dragoons.  His men escaped, but the dragoons cut off his way to the shore.  As they rode at him, reaching out for his sword, he suddenly dashed among them, cut one down, and, diving through the surf, swam out to the boat, his sword between his teeth.  Their bullets churned up the sea all about him, but he was not hit.  He seemed to bear a charmed life; in all his fights he was wounded but once.  That was in the attack on the strongly fortified port of Stroemstad, in which he was repulsed with a loss of 96 killed and 246 wounded, while the Swedish loss footed up over 1500, a fight which led straight to the most astonishing chapter in his whole career, of which more anon.