border town on the line of the coveted territory, set about arming
itself to resist invasion. The citizens built barricades in the
streets--one of them, with wise forethought, in front of the drug
store, "in case any one were to faint" and stand in need of Hoffman's
drops or smelling-salts. The women filled kettles with hot water
in the houses flanking an eventual advance. "Two hundred pounds
of powder" were ordered from the next town by foot-post, and a
cannon that had stood half buried a hundred years, serving for a
hitching-post, was dug up and put into commission. There being a
scarcity of guns, the curate of the next village reported arming
his host with spears and battle-axes as the next best thing. A
rumor of a sudden advance of the enemy sent the mothers with babes
in arms scurrying north for safety. My mother was among them. I
was a month old at the time. Thirty years later I battled for the
mastery in the police office in Mulberry Street with a reporter for
the _Staats-Zeitung_ whom I discovered to be one of those invaders,
and I took it out of him in revenge. Old Cohen carried a Danish
bullet in his arm to remind him of his early ill-doings. But it was
not fired in defence of Ribe. That collapsed when a staff officer
of the government, who had been sent out to report upon the zeal
of the Ribe men, declared that the town could be defended only by
damming the river and flooding the meadows, which would cost two
hundred daler. The minutes of the council represent that that was
held to be too great a price to pay for the privilege of being
sacked, perhaps, as a captured town; and the citizen army disbanded.

[Illustration: Downstream where Ships sailed once]

If the coming of the invading army could have been timed to suit,
the sea, which from old was the bulwark of the nation, might have