The Briton declined. Meanwhile the ships had drifted close enough to speak through the trumpet, and Captain Wessel shouted over from his quarter-deck that “if he could lend him a little powder, they might still go on.” Captain Bactman smilingly shook his head, and then the two drank to one another’s health, each on his own quarter-deck, and parted friends, while their crews manned what was left of the yards and cheered each other wildly. Wessel’s enemies, of whom he had many, especially among the nobility, who looked upon him as a vulgar upstart, used this incident to bring him before a court-martial. It was unpatriotic, they declared, and they demanded that he be degraded and fined. His defence, which with all the records of his career are in the Navy Department at Copenhagen, was brief but to the point. It is summed up in the retort to his accusers that “they themselves should be rebuked, and severely, for failing to understand that an officer in the King’s service should be promoted instead of censured for doing his plain duty,” and that there was nothing in the articles of war commanding him to treat an honorable foe otherwise than with honor. It must be admitted that he gave his critics no lack of cause. His enterprises were often enough of a hair-raising kind, and he had scant patience with censure. Thus once, when harassed by an Admiralty order purposely issued to annoy him, he wrote back: “The biggest fool can see that to obey would defeat all my plans. I shall not do it. It may suit folk who love loafing about shore, but to an honest man such talk is disgusting, let alone that the thing can’t be done.” He was at that time twenty-six years old, and in charge of the whole North Sea fleet. No wonder he had enemies. However, the King was his friend. He made him a nobleman, and gave him the name Tordenskjold. It means “thunder shield.” “Then, by the powers,” he swore when he was told, “I shall thunder in the ears of the Swedes so that the King shall hear of it!” And he kept his word.