Within seven months he took Marstrand. It is part of the record of
that astonishing performance that when the unhappy Commandant
hesitated as the hour of evacuation came, not sure that he had done
right in capitulating, Tordenskjold walked up to the fort with a
hundred men, half his force, banged on the gate, went in alone and
up to the Commandant's window, thundering out:

"What are you waiting for? Don't you know time is up?"

In terror and haste, Colonel Dankwardt moved his Hessians out, and
Tordenskjold marched his handful of men in. When he brought the King
the keys of Marstrand, Frederik made him an admiral.

It was while blockading the port of Göteborg in the last year of the
war that he met and made a friend of Lord Carteret, the English
Ambassador to Denmark, and fell in love with the picture of a young
Englishwoman, Miss Norris, a lady of great beauty and wealth, who,
Lord Carteret told him, was an ardent admirer of his. It was this
love which indirectly sent him to his death. Lord Carteret had given
him a picture of her, and as soon as peace was made he started for
England; but he never reached that country. The remnant of the
Swedish fleet lay in the roadstead at Göteborg, under the guns of
the two forts, New and Old Elfsborg. While Tordenskjold was away at
Marstrand, the enemy sallied forth and snapped up seven of the
smaller vessels of his blockading fleet. The news made him furious.
He sent in, demanding them back at once, "or I will come after
them." He had already made one ineffectual attempt to take New
Elfsborg that cost him dear. In Göteborg they knew the strength of
his fleet and laughed at his threat. But it was never safe to laugh
at Tordenskjold. The first dark night he stole in with ten armed