Like the hurricane eclipse
Of the sun.

The appalling roar of a thousand cannon answered on the part of the
Danes, and soon the very wind of heaven was stilled by the thundering
reverberations of the artillery. We leave the historian to describe
minutely the progress of the fight, and turn to the ship of Anton
Lundt.

We have already said that this ship was the outermost in the inner
harbour, and as the combat deepened, she was exposed to the heavy
broadsides of two English seventy-fours. She was moored stem and
stern, but her stern moorings were shot away, and she consequently
drifted in such a position, that both the English ships poured in an
awful fire that raked her fore and aft. In a few minutes, her bowsprit
was cut to shivers; her foremast was splintered and tottering; her
main-yard broken up; her mizen-mast entirely carried away, and
drifting under her counter; her bows riddled with shot; and her upper
decks strewn with dead and dying. Only about half a dozen of her guns
could be brought to bear, and although the crew made every possible
attempt to manoeuvre the ship, so as to recover her original position,
they entirely failed in doing so; and it was obvious that the
unfortunate vessel would soon be a mere floating shambles, if not
altogether shattered to pieces, and sent to the bottom.

If a boat could have been sent ashore with a hawser, the ship would
speedily have hauled, so as to avoid being raked, and also her own
broadside would have been available; but it would have been hopeless
to send off a boat, as every yard of intervening water was ploughed up
with round and grape shot, and a boat would have been specially aimed
at, and sunk before she had gone a couple of lengths. Moreover, every
boat in the ship had been staved or knocked to atoms already.

In this horrible crisis, Anton Lundt, who was stationed on the
quarter-deck, stepped up to the captain, stripped to the waist, all
begrimed with powder, and sprinkled with the blood of his messmates,
and said: 'I will leap overboard with a line, and swim ashore to that
battery, and then you can bend a hawser to the line; and when we have
hauled and secured it ashore, you will heave upon it, and get the ship
back to her moorings!' The captain gazed a moment at the intrepid
mariner who made such a chivalrous proposal, and then, without a word
of reply, sadly shook his head, and significantly pointed to the
water, which was all alive with h