"Softly and quickly, comrades!" cried Ian Dhu, whose head, surmounted by the entire eagle's wing, towered above all others, as he advanced to the front with a colour in his hand; "we shall be at them with our pikes before helmets are buckled or matches blown."
At that moment the fireship blew up!
After firing the train with his own royal hand, King Christian had dropped into a small boat, and been pulled on board of the Anna Catharina, on the poop of which he stood anxiously watching the effect of his skill.
The fireship reached the boom, and running full tilt against it, was retained there by her grapnels; the lighted trains rushed through all parts of the ship, and in a moment the troughs, the decks, the rigging and the tarred sails, were enveloped in one vast pyramid of roaring flame, which shed a lurid glow on the waters around it, and the shore before us. Brighter and brighter it grew; we could see in the foreground the whole outline of Eckernfiörd, then esteemed the prettiest town in Juteland, with its high old German gables and wooden spire, the long rows of trees that shaded its streets, and surrounded the half circular harbour; the barricades which closed its avenues; the palisaded breastwork we had come to storm, and the long bridge with its Tollbooth bristling with cannon. Brighter yet and broader grew that sheet of wavering light, and tipped with it, as they rose and fell, the waves of the Baltic rolled like billows of liquid fire; the low flat shore on which they broke was bathed in alternate glows of yellow flame and dusky-red, as the various combustibles ignited in succession.
We saw the white froth amid which the vast boom was surging and chafing; we saw distinctly the masts, spars, and rigging of the storeships within; we saw the casements of the town—even the gilt vane on the church spire shone in this glorious but terrible flush of flame; while the hoarse drums beat to arms, and we heard the loud and sudden murmur, as from a crowd of startled men, arise within the town. The Imperialists rushed to their posts, and in three minutes their helmets were seen glittering in lines behind the barricades, for the town, from which all the inhabitants had fled, was but rudely and hastily fortified.
Like a volcano showering a million of burning brands over the whole fiörd, the fireship blew up with a shock which made the waters vibrate and lash the level shore, while the concussion was felt at the bottom of every ship in the fleet.
The great boom broke in two like a withered reed. A momentary silence followed; then, from the vast height to which they had been shot by the explosion, we heard the burning pieces fall hissing into the water. But their expiring blaze was almost immediately renewed by the storeships, which caught fire, and enabled the Danish vessels to cannonade the town, from the falling roofs of which the bricks and tiles flew in showers through the air, as the round shot boomed among them.
Having formed in the water in three columns, under the Count de Montgomerie, with the Highlanders in front, we advanced pell-mell to storm the graff and stockade which enclosed the town, on that side where a gate opened towards the road from Kiel; from these works the enemy opened a brisk fire on us. Ian Dhu, an officer as skilful as he was brave, sent Captain-lieutenant Sir Patrick Mackay, with fifty musketeers of his own company, into a lofty house, from the windows of which their fire swept the stockades in flank. Under cover of this we stormed them with comparative ease, throwing ourselves into the graff, officers and men, pikes, musketeers, and colours; we rushed from thence up the rough glacis, climbing with one hand and fighting with the other, though, by the storm of lead which rained upon our ranks, many a brave fellow was swept back into the slough of the ditch to die among its mud and slime.
Torn down or hewn to pieces in some places, surmounted in others, the palisades were won, and Ian Dhu, though bleeding from three wounds, had the honour first to place St Andrew's cross on the summit, and, with a wild yell of triumph, the hardy Highlanders closed up beneath it, and broad over their heads its blue silk folds were rustling in the midnight blast. In the deadly melée that ensued here, the Austrians were overmatched by our Scottish cavaliers, who used their long claymores with both hands, hewing down with the edge, while the former only gave point with their slender rapiers, which were much less effective. I found this particularly the case when encountering a gigantic Spanish officer (for there were three companies of Castilians in the town). He lunged at me incessantly; but parrying one terrible thrust with my claymore, after narrowly escaping being run through by a demi-lance, I overthrew the Don by a backhanded blow from my dirk.
Another Spanish cavalier, a tall and powerful man, wearing a burganet of bright steel, was disarmed by Phadrig Mhor, at whom he discharged his pistols after surrender.