, Denmark was lost.
In Swedish harbors a still bigger fleet was fitting out for the
Baltic.

King Christian was well up in the sixties, worn with the tireless
activities of a long reign; but once more he proved himself greater
than adversity. When the evil tidings reached him, in the midst of
profound peace, the enemy was already within the gates. The country
lay prostrate. The name of Torstenson, the Swedish general, spread
terror wherever it was heard. In the German campaigns he had been
known as the "Swedish Lightning." Beset on every side, never had
Denmark's need been greater. The one man who did not lose his head
was her king. By his personal example he put heart into the people
and shamed the cowardly nobles. He borrowed money wherever he could,
sent his own silver to the mint, crowded the work in the navy-yard
by night and by day, gathered an army, and hurried with it to the
Sounds where the enemy might cross. When the first ships were ready
he sailed around the Skaw to meet the Dutch hirelings. "I am old and
stiff," he said, "and no good any more to fight on land. But I can
manage the ships."

And he did. He met the Dutchmen in the North Sea, in under the
Danish coast, and whipped them, almost single-handed, for his own
ship _Trefoldigheden_ was for a long while the only one that wind
and tide would let come up with them. That done, he left one of his
captains to watch lest they come out from among the islands where
their ships of shallower draught had sought refuge, and sailed for
Copenhagen. Everything that could carry sail was ready for him by
that time; also the news that the Swedish fleet of forty-six
fighting ships under Klas Fleming had sailed for the coast of
Holstein to take on board Torstenson's army.

King Christian lost no time. He hoisted his flag on _Trefoldigheden_
and made after them with thirty-nine ships, vowing that he would
win this fight or die. At Kolberger Heide, the water outside the
Fjord of Kiel, he caught up with them and attacked at once. The
battle that then ensued is the one of which the poet sings and with
which the name of Christian IV is forever linked.

At the outset the Danish fleet was in great peril. The Swedes fought
gallantly as was their wont, and they were three or four against
one, for most of the King's ships came up slowly, some of them
purposely, so it seems. The King said after the battle of certain of
his captains, "They used me as a screen between them and t