, with rudder shot to pieces, half a wreck, rigging
all gone, and a number of her guns demolished. But when the enemy
returned he was hailed with a cheer and a broadside, and the fight
was on once more. This time they were three to one; one of the
British frigates of forty-four guns had come up and joined in.

When the hull of the _Prince Christian_ was literally knocked to
pieces, and of her 576 men 69 lay dead and 137 wounded, including
the chief and all of his officers who were yet alive, Captain Jessen
determined as a last desperate chance to run one of his opponents
down and board her with what remained of his crew. But his officers
showed him that it was impossible; the ship could not be manoeuvred.
There was a momentary lull in the fire and out of the night came a
cry, "Strike your colors!" The Danish reply was a hurrah and a
volley from all the standing guns. Three broad-sides crashed into
the doomed ship in quick succession, and the battle was over. The
_Prince Christian_ stood upon the shore, a wreck.

Young Willemoes was spared the grief of seeing the last Danish
man-of-war strike its flag. In the hottest of the fight, as he
jumped upon a gun the better to locate the enemy in the gloom, a
cannon-ball took off the top of his head. He fell into the arms of a
fellow officer with the muttered words, "Oh God! my head--my
country!" and was dead. In his report of the fight Captain Jessen
wrote against his name: "Fell in battle--honored as he is missed."
They made his grave on shore with the fallen sailors, and as the sea
washed up other bodies they were buried with them.

The British captured the wreck, but they could only set fire to it
after removing the wounded. In the night it blew up where it stood.
That was the end of the last ship of Denmark's proud navy.

THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR ALONE

Jens Kofoed was the name of a trooper who served in the disastrous
war of Denmark against Sweden in Karl Gustav's day. He came from the
island of Bornholm in the Baltic, where he tilled a farm in days of
peace. When his troop went into winter quarters, he got a furlough
to go home to receive the new baby that was expected about
Christmas. Most of his comrades were going home for the holidays,
and their captain made no objection. The Swedish king was fighting
in far-off Poland, and no one dreamed that he would come over the
ice with his army in the depth of winter to reckon with Denmark. So
Jens Kofoed took ship