We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [5]
Now we were inside Eckernförde Fjord, where the shores were closer and the cannons' positions clearly visible. Kresten Hansen leaned over to Ejnar Jensen and confided in him, yet again, his conviction that he wouldn't survive the battle.
"I've known it since the day the German demanded the duty coffers. I'm going to die today."
"You know nothing," Ejnar replied. "You had no idea the battle would be on Maundy Thursday."
"I've known a long time: the hour is upon us!"
"Shut your trap," growled Ejnar. He'd suffered Kresten's bleating ever since they'd packed their sea bags and laced their boots.
But Kresten was unstoppable. Breathing in rapid gasps, he placed a hand on his friend's arm.
"Promise me you'll bring my sea bag back to Marstal."
"You can bring it yourself. Now stop it, before you scare the living daylights out of me too."
Ejnar threw an anxious glance at Kresten. We'd never seen our friend in such a state before. Kresten was the son of the skipper Jochum Hansen, an official with the harbor authority. Kresten took after him, right down to the freckles, the strawberry blond hair, and the silent manner.
"Here," Ejnar said, handing him a pitcher of beer. "Get that down your neck."
He held it to Kresten's lips, but the beer went down the wrong way; he spluttered and his eyes grew glassy. Ejnar slapped him on the back, and Kresten gasped and wheezed, the beer pouring from his nostrils.
"You dumb oaf," Ejnar laughed. "You won't drown if you're meant to hang. You nearly finished yourself off there. You're doing the German out of a job."
But Kresten's eyes remained distant.
"The hour is upon us," he repeated in a hollow voice.
"Well, I for one am not going to be shot." Little Clausen had joined in the conversation. "I know, because I dreamt it. I was walking down Møllevejen, going into town. There was a soldier on either side of me, ready to shoot. Then a voice called out, 'You shall go!' And so I did. The bullets whizzed past my ears, but none of them hit me. So I'm not going to get shot today. I'm certain of it!"
We looked across the fjord: the surrounding fields were clad in spring green, and a thatched farmhouse lay snuggled in a small grove of lime trees in bud, with a road flanked by stone walls leading up to it. A cow grazing by the roadside turned her back to us and flicked her tail lazily, oblivious to the war approaching by water.
The cannon batteries to starboard were closing in; we saw the smoke, then heard their thunder roll across the water like a storm gathering from nowhere.
Kresten leapt up.
"The hour is upon us," he said.
A tongue of fire flashed from the Christian the Eighth's starboard stern. We exchanged puzzled glances. Had she been struck?
Being unfamiliar with warfare, we did not know what a direct hit might entail. There was no reaction from the ship-of-the-line.
"Why don't they shoot back?" Ejnar asked.
"Because they're still not crosswise to the battery," Clausen answered knowledgeably.
A moment later a cloud of pewter smoke on the starboard side of the Christian announced that they were indeed responding. The battle had begun. Fire and earth exploded on the shore and tiny matchstick if men rushed around. A good easterly wind was blowing and soon it was Gefion's turn to deliver a broadside. The roar from the huge sixty-pound cannons made the whole ship shudder. Our stomachs lurched. We pressed our hands to our ears and screamed from a mixture of fear and elation, astounded by the force of the impact.
Now the German was getting a real hammering!
After some minutes, the firing from the battery on the point ceased.
By now we had to rely solely on our eyes because we couldn't hear a thing. The shore looked like a desert landscape, with sand shoved up in piles. The black barrel of a twenty-four-pounder stuck up in the air, flipped over as if