The road ran along the shore, the bay suddenly became alive, the white and red flags approached, and the sky-blue lion prepared to spring. Was not the sea, the kingdom of the old Vikings, subject to the island people; how long did the Sound stand beneath the dominion of Danish cannon?
And it was a submissive bay of the conquered East Sea, which here made its entry into the Schleswig-Holstein country of beeches and hedges.
Suddenly the waves became alive, from the narrow tongue of land, from Holsens, where the Leviathans, the armed men of war, lay, it came ever nearer like a dark cloud upon the billows, a dense evil-boding throng.
They were the Danish gun-boats; then flashed the shots, then blazed the touch-holes. Astonished, the waves caught the strange smoke of powder which spread itself over them like a veil, and the cartridges rattled on the strand.
Like an ocean monster of the old legend rolling devouringly upon the land, death leaped from the waves and laid its victims low. The road became filled with corpses, of what use were the single bullets, which struck the boats; of what avail the temporary shelter behind the trunks of trees along the path!
"Forward to the foundry!" rang the cry of death. It was a kind of trench granting protection. There they could fall fighting; here the band resembled game driven by the keepers, upon which the sportsmen can shoot from a safe position.
And with winged steps all thronged to the fort of death, determined, at least, to sell their lives dearly.
Cartridge upon cartridge blazed across; wounded and dying leaned against the tall stems of the beeches, and the down crashing branches decked these pale brows as if with a homely wreath of honour, upon which trickled the cold drops of death.
Already Blanden saw the smoking furnaces of the foundry before him; there a flash quivers through the cloud of vapour; in conical flight the birds of death swept through, on right and left, fell into the trees, here and there penetrated the earth, struck the companions by his side, and stretched Blanden himself on the ground. He gazed into the night, as it descended upon his eyes--the night of death--but uttered not a word of lament. His last thought before his senses forsook him was the futility of his life, which was honourably terminated by death upon the battle-field.
When he opened his eyes again amidst violent pain, he fancied he was still under the spell of a dream: had he awoke in India amongst the peris? His bewildered fancy led the favourite images of his waking dreams before his mind.