Part 2

'I know it, captain,' rejoined the undaunted volunteer; 'but there is a God above all!' Without further parley, Anton seized a coil of small white line, and with the dexterity of a seaman, knotted the end over his neck and beneath one arm, bringing the bight over his shoulder for convenience in swimming. He then slipped off his trousers--the only garment he had on--and took a few loose coils in his hand, his messmates undertaking to attend to the running out of the bight after him. All was the work of a minute; and without pause, he plunged head-foremost into the sea from the taffrail, shouting, as he clave the air: 'For Rosine og gamle Danmark--hurrah!'

He rose some dozen yards or more from the ship's stern, having dived straight for his bourne, which was not more than eighty yards distant at the most. The general surface of the harbour would have been perfectly calm, had it not been for the continuous swells created by the oscillations of the Danish ships, as they rocked to and fro under their heavy broadsides. Just as Anton Lundt emerged, a twenty-four pounder struck the water within a few yards of his back, but ricochetted exactly over his head, merely stunning him for a moment with the spray. He swam straight as an arrow, with the long and powerful strokes of a first-rate swimmer; and occasionally, when the grape and musket shots whistled thick as hailstones around him, he dexterously dived. Thus swimming and diving alternately, he very quickly sped two-thirds of the perilous distance, amid the cheers of his countrymen. At length, however, the nearest English ship observed him, and probably guessed his object; for the marines on her poop fired a close volley at him, and a scream of rage and despair from his messmates arose, when they beheld him wildly throw up his left arm in unmistakable agony, and flounder in what appeared his death-flurry. Then his body rose perpendicularly, till his shoulders were a foot or more clear above the water, and he slowly fell backward, with his head pointing to the Danish battery. Contrary to expectation, he did not sink, however, but floated at full length, with nothing but a portion of his face visible. After a pause, he was observed to be propelling himself with his feet--swimming on his back, in fact--and his messmates on board the ship, and his countrymen at the battery, now cheered louder than ever. Two minutes of breathless suspense followed, and then a dozen hands were stretched forth, and he was lifted up the stony slope that led to the level of the battery. A moment he turned round, and faced towards his ship--his right arm hanging helplessly down by his side, shattered above the elbow by a ball, and his naked body streaming with blood from several wounds--then he waved his left arm in the air, and feebly hurrahing, fell senseless in the arms of the soldiers. By the order of one of their officers, he was immediately conveyed out of further danger. Meanwhile, had victory to the Danish arms depended on poor Anton Lundt's single heroic effort, Denmark would assuredly have triumphed, for his scheme succeeded perfectly. A hawser had been attached to the end of the line aboard the ship, the soldiers promptly hauled it ashore and secured it, and then the man-o'-war was easily hauled out of her critical position.

Let us now briefly glance at the progress of the main battle. It commenced exactly at five minutes after ten A.M., and in about an hour it was general on both sides. The Danes fought--as they ever have fought, and ever will fight--like worthy descendants of their Scandinavian forefathers, and for awhile the result seemed doubtful. As already mentioned, Sir Hyde Parker could not get to Nelson's aid; and it is related that this excellent man--who was as generous-minded as brave--endured dreadful anxiety on account of Nelson and Graves. In another half hour he could bear it no longer, and resolved to make a signal for the recall of the two subordinate admirals, remarking to his own captain, that if Nelson, whose extraordinary character he well understood, really felt himself in a position to continue the battle with a prospect of ultimate victory, he would heroically disobey the signal.

The signal of recall was accordingly hoisted, just at the time when the fire of the Danes had reached its acme, and it was yet a matter of considerable uncertainty to which side victory would incline. Nelson was swiftly pacing his quarter-deck, moving the stump of his lost arm up and down with excitement, and the balls of the foe whizzed thickly around him, stretching many a brave fellow lifeless at his feet. The splinters flew from the main-mast, which a ball perforated; and then it was that Nelson is said to have smilingly observed: 'Warm work! this day may be the last to any of us at a moment! But, mark you--_I would not be elsewhere for thousands!_'

The lieutenant whose duty it was to attend to the signals, now informed him that No. 39--'Leave off action!'--was hoisted on board the commander-in-chief. Nelson heard this unmoved, and made no reply. A second time the signal-lieutenant reported it to him, and asked if he should answer it in turn. 'No!' was the stern reply; 'but acknowledge it.' He then asked if his own signal for 'close action' was duly flying, and being affirmatively responded to, said: 'Mind you keep it so!' Let us quote the characteristic scene that immediately ensued:--

'"Do you know," said he to Mr Ferguson, "what is shewn on board the commander-in-chief! No. 39!" Mr Ferguson asked what that meant. "Why, to leave off action!" Then, shrugging his shoulders, he repeated the words, "Leave off action? Now, ---- me if I do! You know, Foley," turning to his own captain, "I have only one eye--I have a right to be blind sometimes!" and then, putting the glass to his blind eye, in that mood of mind which sports with bitterness, he exclaimed: "I really do not see the signal!" Presently he exclaimed: "---- the signal! keep mine flying for closer battle! That's the way I answer such signals! Nail mine to the mast!"'

The action continued with increased vigour, for Admiral Graves, probably taking his cue from Nelson, also disobeyed Sir Hyde Parker's signal. At one P.M., the fire of the Danes grew weaker, and by degrees it slackened, so that at thirty minutes past two P.M., it had ceased altogether in many parts of their shore defences, and most of their ships struck to the English, although the Crown Batteries, and a few men-o'-war ahead of Nelson's position, still fought with desperation, and fired on the English boats sent off to secure the prizes. Some of the surrendered ships were, in fact, placed between two fires--that of friends and foes, and the unfortunate crews suffered proportionately. Nelson was both angry and grieved at this; and he immediately went into the stern-gallery, and addressed a world-renowned note to the crown-prince, couched in these words:--

'Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson has been commanded to spare Denmark when she no longer resists. The line of defence which covered her shores has struck to the British flag; but if the firing is continued on the part of Denmark, he must set on fire all the prizes that he has taken, without having the power of saving the men who have so nobly defended them. The brave Danes are the brothers, and should never be the enemies, of the English.'

He sealed this in an unusually formal manner, saying, that 'it was no time to appear hurried.' Captain Sir Frederick Thesiger carried this letter ashore,[1] with a flag of truce, and delivered it to the crown-prince, at the Sally Port. The latter sent to know the precise meaning of Nelson, and he replied thus:--'Lord Nelson's object in sending the flag of truce was humanity; he therefore consents that hostilities shall cease, and that the wounded Danes may be taken on shore. And Lord Nelson will take his prisoners out of the vessels, and burn or carry off the prizes as he shall think fit. Lord Nelson, with humble duty to his Royal Highness the Prince, will consider this the greatest victory he has ever gained, if it may be the cause of a happy union between his own most gracious sovereign and his majesty the king of Denmark.'

The immediate result was a total cessation of hostilities, and a most complete victory to the English. When the contest was over, the wounded were gradually collected and removed to the hospitals and private houses of the city--to the latter when their personal friends claimed them. Many of the Danish soldiers and sailors engaged were natives of Copenhagen, or had relatives and dear friends therein, and the scenes that ensued during the afternoon, evening, and night, were heart-rending in the extreme. Parents, wives, brothers, sisters, and sweethearts, franticly ran from place to place, alike hoping and dreading to learn certain tidings of the fate of those so dear to them. All Copenhagen was a city of wo and wailing. Everybody had sustained a loss. Mothers and fathers wept for their brave sons killed, wounded, or prisoners; sisters for their brothers; girls for their lovers; the patriot for his poor conquered country and his slaughtered countrymen. Tremendous, in our estimation, was the moral responsibility of the English ministry for 'letting slip the dogs of war' for a slight cause--nay, strictly speaking, for no valid cause whatever. Our firm conviction is, that had England left Denmark to her own honourable instincts, the latter nation would never have given real occasion for an appeal to arms. Even yet more cruel and criminal was the bombardment of the city of Copenhagen itself, only six years subsequently to Nelson's _raid_--for it was nothing better. But they managed matters fifty years ago in a different manner from what the enlightened spirit of the age would now tolerate. No British ministry of the present day would dare or wish to act as did the ruling sachems in the early part of this century.

Anton Lundt--as true a hero as Nelson himself, although incomparably a humbler one--was, as already related, conveyed to the rear of the battery, and his wounds were attended to as well as circumstances would admit. Later in the evening, his father, an old invalid man-o'-war's-man, found him, and had him removed to his own humble home. The poor fellow had never recovered consciousness, and for many long hours he lay moaning, and occasionally struggling convulsively, under his natal roof, and in the same little room where he was born. His aged parents and a few friends wept around him; but there was one other watcher by his side, whose grief, although silent, surpassed theirs. It was his betrothed _Pige_, or sweetheart, Rosine Boerentzen--she whose image had excited his heroism, she whose name was coupled with Denmark as his battle-cry. She shed not a tear--her anguish was too deep for that--but sat by his lowly pallet, supporting his head on her bosom, and wiping away the light foam from his bubbling lips. Ever and anon the dying sailor--for, alas! dying he was--would utter sea-phrases, or affecting words of friendship or of love, yet not even the voice of Rosine, continually murmuring in his ear, could recall him to sensibility.

The midnight hour approached: a medical man had just been in, and departed with the brief but decided assurance that the patient could not possibly survive many minutes. A worthy clergyman was kneeling with the family around the couch, praying to God to receive the parting spirit. In the midst of their supplications, the countenance of Anton Lundt was illumined with a gleam of unearthly triumph, and springing half-upright, he tossed his left arm aloft, and in soul-thrilling tones pealed forth his battle-cry of 'Rosine og gamle Danmark--hurrah!' He then instantly fell back a corpse on the bosom of his betrothed.

In the suburb of Oesterbrö, at Copenhagen, is a naval cemetery, and it generally attracts the eye of the stranger, as it most forcibly did our own, by a number of rough, picturesque fragments of unhewn granite, strewn over the mortal remains of the brave men who fell fighting for old Denmark against Nelson. The simple words, '_Anton Lundt, död 2 April 1801_,' may be seen on one of them.

Rosine Boerentzen never smiled again. On the first anniversary of the battle, she returned home from the cemetery, where she had been to place a wreath of _immortelles_ on the grave of her betrothed, after the fashion of her country, and ere morning dawned, her soul had fled to rejoin her hero in heaven. Peace to the souls of the brave, and of all who loved and were loved of the brave who fell at the Battle of the Baltic!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One of the grand basso-relievos recently placed on the base of Nelson's Monument, in Trafalgar Square, London, represents Nelson in the act of delivering the letter to the young captain who acted as his aid-de-camp on the occasion. The subjects of the three other relievos are _St Vincent_, _The Nile_, and _Trafalgar_.

WHY DOES THE CLOCK KEEP TIME?

A pendulous body vibrates when it is suspended so that the centre of its mass is not placed directly under the point of suspension, because then the alternating influences of weight and velocity are constantly impressing it with motion. Weight carries it down as far as it can go towards the earth's attraction; acquired velocity then carries it onwards; but as the onward movement is constrained to be upward against the direction of the earth's attraction, that force antagonises, and at last arrests it, for velocity flags when it has to drag its load up-hill, and soon gives over the effort. The body swings down-hill with increasing rapidity, because weight and velocity are then both driving it; it swings up-hill with diminishing rapidity, because then weight is pulling it back in opposition to the force of velocity. Weight pulls first this way, then that way; velocity carries first this way, then that way: but the two powers do not act evenly and steadily together; they now combine with, and now oppose each other; now increase their influence together, and now augment and diminish it inversely and alternately; and so the suspended body is tossed backwards and forwards between them, and made to perform its endless dance.

It is related of Galileo, that he once stood watching a swinging lamp, hung from the roof of the cathedral at Pisa, until he convinced himself that it performed its vibratory movement in the same time, whether the vibration was one of wide or of narrow span. This traditionary tale is most probably correct in its main features, for the Newtons and Galileos of all ages do perceive great truths in occurrences that are as commonplace as the fall of an apple, or the disturbance of a hanging lamp. Trifles are full of meaning to them, because their minds are already prepared to arrive at certain conclusions by means of antecedent reflections. Simple and familiar incidents, thus accidentally associated with the history of grand discoveries, are the channels through which the accumulating waters at length descend, rather than the rills which feed the swelling of their floods. The orchard at Woolsthorpe, and the cathedral at Pisa, were outlets of this kind, through which the pent-up tide of gathering knowledge burst. If they had never offered themselves, the laws of universal gravitation and isochronous vibration would still have reached the world.

If the reader will hang up two equal weights upon nearly the same point of suspension, and by means of two strings of exactly the same length, he will have an apparatus at his command that will enable him to see, under even more favourable conditions, what Galileo saw in the cathedral at Pisa. Upon drawing one of them aside one foot from the position of rest, and the other one yard, and then starting them off both together to vibrate backwards and forwards, he will observe, that although the second has a journey of two yards to accomplish, while the first has but a journey of two feet, the two will, nevertheless, come to the end at precisely the same instant. As the weights swing from side to side in successive oscillations, they will always present themselves together at the point which is the middle of their respective arcs. This is what is called isochronous vibration--the passing through unequal arcs in equal periods of time.

At the first glance, this seems a very singular result. The careless observer naturally expects that a weight hung upon a string ought to take longer to move through a long arc than through a short one, if impelled by the same force; but the subject appears in a different light upon more mature reflection, for it is then seen, that the weight which performs the longer journey starts down the steeper declivity, and therefore acquires a greater velocity. A ball does not run down a steep hill and a more gently inclined one at the same pace; neither, therefore, will the suspended weight move down the steeper curve, and the less raised one, at equal rates. The weight which moves the fastest, of necessity gets through more space in a given period than its more leisurely companion does. The equality of the periods in which two weights vibrate, is perfect so long as both the unequal arcs of motion are short ones, when compared with the length of the suspending strings; but even when one of the arcs is five times longer than the other, ten thousand vibrations will be completed before one weight is an entire stride in advance of the other; and even this small amount of difference is destroyed when the arc in which the weights swing is a little flattened from the circular curve.

But there is yet another surprise to be encountered. Hang a weight of a pound upon one of the strings, and a weight of two pounds upon the other, and set them vibrating in arcs of unequal length as before, and still their motions will be found to be isochronous. Unequal weights, as well as equal ones, when hung on equal strings, will swing through arcs of unequal length in equal periods of time. This seeming inconsistency also admits of a satisfactory explanation. It has been stated, that the motion of swinging bodies is caused by the earth's attraction. But what are the facts that are more particularly implied in this statement? What discoveries does the philosophic inquirer make when he looks more narrowly into it? For the sake of familiar illustration, let it be imagined that a man stands at the top of the Monument of London, with two leaden bullets in his hand, each weighing an ounce, and that he drops these together. They go to the earth, because the earth's mass draws them thither; and since the two bodies exactly resemble each other, and start at the same instant upon their descent, they must of course both strike the pavement beneath simultaneously. There can be no reason why one should get down before the other, for the same influence causes the fall of each. The entire mass of the huge earth attracts each bullet alike, and the bullets, therefore, yield like obedience to the influence, and fall together to the ground.

But now, suppose that the two bullets were to be all at once fused into one, and that this combined mass were then dropped from the top of the Monument as a single bullet, would there then be any reason why the two ounces of lead should make a more rapid descent than they would have made while in separate halves? Clearly not. There is but the same earth to attract, and the same number of particles to be drawn in each case, and therefore the same result must ensue. Each particle still renders its own individual obedience, and makes its own independent fall, although joined cohesively to its neighbours. It is the mass of the attracting body, and not the mass of the attracted body, that determines the velocity with which the latter moves. The greater mass of an attracted body expends its superior power, not in increasing its own rate of motion, but in pulling more energetically against the attracting mass. Every particle of matter when at rest resists any attempt to impress it with motion. The amount of this resistance is called its inertia. When many particles are united together into one body, they not only, therefore, take to that body many points upon which the earth's attraction can tell, but they also carry to it a like quantity of resistance or inertia, which must be overcome before any given extent of motion can be produced. If the earth's force be but just able to make particle 1 of any body go through 200 inches in a second, it will also be but just able to make particles 2, 3, and 4 do the same; consequently, whether those particles be separate or combined together, their rate of travelling will be the same. Hence all bodies descend to the earth with exactly the same velocities, however different their natures may be in the matter of weight, always provided there be no retarding influence to act unequally upon their different bulks and surfaces. It is well known that even a guinea and feather will fall together when the atmospheric resistance is removed from their path.

The reader will now, of course, see that what is true of the motion of free bodies, must also be true of the motion of suspended ones, since the same terrestrial attraction causes both. There is no reason why the two-pound weight in the experiment should vibrate quicker than the one-pound weight, just as there is no reason why a two-ounce bullet should fall quicker than a one-ounce bullet. Here, also, there are only the same number of terrestrial particles to act upon each separate particle of the two unequal weights. Hence it is that the vibrations of unequal weights are isochronous when hung on strings of equal lengths.

Thus far our dealings have been with what has seemed to be a very single-purposed and determined agent. We have hung a weight upon a piece of string and set it swinging, and have then seen it persisting in making the same number of beats in the same period of time, whether we have given it a long journey or a short one to perform; and also whether we have added to or taken from its mass. But now we enter upon altogether new relations with our little neophyte, and find that we have reached the limits of its patience.

Take three pieces of string of unequal lengths--one being one foot long; the second, four feet; and the third, nine feet. Hang them up by one extremity, and attach to each of the other ends a weight. Then start the three weights all off together vibrating, and observe what happens. The several bodies do not now all vibrate in the same times as in the previous experiments. By making the lengths of the strings unequal, we have introduced elements of discord into the company. The weight on the shortest string makes three journeys, and the weight on the next longest string makes two journeys, while the other is loitering through one.

This discrepancy, again, is only what the behaviour of the vibrating masses in the previous experiments should have taught the observer to anticipate. Each of the weights in this new arrangement of the strings, has to swing in the portion of a circle, which, if completed, would have a different dimension from the circles in which the other weights swing. The one on the shortest string swings in the segment of a circle that would be two feet across; the one on the longest string swings in the segment of a circle that would be eighteen feet across. Now, if these two weights be made to vibrate in arcs that shall measure exactly the twelfth part of the entire circumference of their respective circles, then one will go backwards and forwards in a curved line only half a foot long, while the other will move in a line four feet and a half long.