Tordenskjold had kept his word to the King.  Not as much as a yawl of the Dynekilen fleet was left to the enemy.  He had sunk or burned thirteen and captured thirty-one ships with his seven, and all the piled-up munitions of war were in his hands.  King Charles gave up the siege, marched his army out of Norway, and the country was saved.  The victory cost Tordenskjold but nineteen killed and fifty-seven wounded.  On his own ship six men were killed and twenty wounded.

Of infinite variety was this sea-fighter.  After a victory like this, one hears of him in the next breath gratifying a passing whim of the King, who wanted to know what the Swedish people thought of their Government after Charles’s long wars that are said to have cost their country a million men.  Tordenskjold overheard it, had himself rowed across to Sweden, picked up there a wedding party, bridegroom, minister, guests, and all, including the captain of the shore watch who was among them, and returned in time for the palace dinner with his catch.  King Frederik was entertaining Czar Peter the Great, who had been boasting of the unhesitating loyalty of his men which his Danish host could not match.  He now had the tables turned upon him.  It is recorded that the King sent the party back with royal gifts for the bride.  One would be glad to add that Tordenskjold sent back, too, the silver pitcher and the parlor clock his men took on their visit.  But he didn’t.  They were still in Copenhagen a hundred years later, and may be they are yet.  It was not like his usual gallantry toward the fair sex.  But perhaps he didn’t know anything about it.

Then we find him, after an unsuccessful attack on Goeteborg that cost many lives, sending in his adjutant to congratulate the Swedish commandant on their “gallant encounter” the day before, and exchanging presents with him in token of mutual regard.  And before one can turn the page he is discovered swooping down upon Marstrand, taking town and fleet anchored there, and the castle itself with its whole garrison, all with two hundred men, swelled by stratagem into an army of thousands.  We are told that an officer sent out from the castle to parley, issuing forth from a generous dinner, beheld the besieging army drawn up in street after street, always two hundred men around every corner, as he made his way through the town, piloted by Tordenskjold himself, who was careful to take him the longest way, while the men took the short cut to the next block.  The man returned home with the message that the town was full of them and that resistance was useless.  The ruse smacks of Peder Wessel’s boyish fight with a much bigger fellow who had beaten him once by gripping his long hair, and so getting his head in chancery.  But Peder had taken notice.  Next time he came to the encounter with hair cut short and his whole head smeared with soft-soap, and that time he won.