ighting ground or keep up their armaments without command of
the waterways, the victory rested finally with the Danes. And this
was due almost wholly to one extraordinary figure, the like of which
is scarce to be found in the annals of warfare, Peder Tordenskjold.
Rising in ten brief years from the humblest place before the mast,
a half-grown lad, to the rank of admiral, ennobled by his King and
the idol of two nations, only to be assassinated on the "field of
honor" at thirty, he seems the very incarnation of the stormy times
of the Eleven Years' War, with which his sun rose and set; for the
year in which peace was made also saw his death.

Peder Jansen Wessel was born on October 28, 1690, in the city of
Trondhjem, Norway, which country in those days was united with
Denmark under one king. His father was an alderman with eighteen
children. Peder was the tenth of twelve wild boys. It is related
that the father in sheer desperation once let make for him a pair of
leathern breeches which he would not be able to tear. But the lad,
not to be beaten so easily, sat on a grind-stone and had one of his
school-fellows turn it till the seat was worn thin, a piece of
bravado that probably cost him dear, for doubtless the exasperated
father's stick found the attenuated spot.

Since he would have none of the school, his father had him
apprenticed out to a tailor with the injunction not to spare the
rod. But sitting cross-legged on a tailor's stool did not suit the
lad, and he took it out of his master by snowballing him thoroughly
one winter's day. Next a barber undertook to teach him his trade;
but Peder ran away and was drifting about the streets when the King
came to Norway. The boy saw the splendid uniforms and heard the
story of the beautiful capital by the Oeresund, with its palaces and
great fighting ships. When the King departed, he was missing, and
for a while there was peace in Trondhjem.

Down in Copenhagen the homeless lad was found wandering about by the
King's chaplain, who, being himself a Norwegian, took him home and
made him a household page. But the boy's wanderings had led him to
the navy-yard, where he saw mid-shipmen of his own size at drill,
and he could think of nothing else. When he should have been waiting
at table he was down among the ships. For him there was ever but one
way to any goal, the straight cut, and at fifteen he wrote to the
King asking to be appointed a midshipman. "I am wearing away my lif