and some 2000 pieces of
artillery, most of them of the heaviest calibre, filled the long Sound
with the roar of battle. Nelson loved close fighting, and he anchored
within a cable's length of the Danish flagship, the pilots refusing to
carry the ship nearer on account of the shallow depth, and the average
distance of the hostile lines was less than a hundred fathoms. The
cannonade raged, deep-voiced, unbroken, and terrible, for three hours.
"Warm work," said Nelson, as it seemed to deepen in fury and volume,
"but, mark you, I would not be elsewhere for thousands." The carnage
was terrific. Twice the Danish flagship took fire, and out of a crew
of 336 no fewer than 270 were dead or wounded. Two of the Danish prams
drifted from the line, mere wrecks, with cordage in rags, bulwarks
riddled, guns dismounted, and decks veritable shambles.

The battle, it must be remembered, raged within easy sight of the city,
and roofs and church towers were crowded with spectators. They could
see nothing but a low-lying continent of whirling smoke, shaken with
the tumult of battle, and scored perpetually, in crimson bars, with the
flame of the guns. Above the drifting smoke towered the tops of the
British seventy-fours, stately and threatening. The south-east wind
presently drove the smoke over the city, and beneath that inky roof, as
under the gloom of an eclipse, the crowds of Copenhagen, white-faced
with excitement, watched the Homeric fight, in which their sons, and
brothers, and husbands were perishing.

Nothing could surpass the courage of the Danes. Fresh crews marched
fiercely to the floating batteries as these threatened to grow silent
by mere slaughter, and, on decks crimson and slippery with the blood of
their predecessors, took up the fight. Again and again, after a Danish
ship had struck from mere exhaustion, it was manned afresh from the
shore, and the fight renewed. The very youngest officer in the Danish
navy was a lad of seventeen named Villemoes. He commanded a tiny
floating battery of six guns, manned by twenty-four men, and he managed
to bring it under the very counter of Nelson's flagship, and fired his
guns point-blank into its huge wooden sides. He stuck to his work
until the British marines shot down every man of his tiny crew except
four. After the battle Nelson begged that young Villemoes might be
introduced to him, and told the Danish Crown Prince that a boy so
gallant ought to be made an admiral.