A race reputed peace-loving, but most pugnacious when
roused, was stirred now to its very depths. British hearts beat high
throughout the length and breadth of the land, proudly mindful of
their former prowess and manfully hopeful of emulating former glorious
deeds.
It was the same wherever Englishmen gathered under the old flag; in
every corner of the world peopled by offshoots from the old stock,
most of all in those strongholds and dependencies beyond sea captured
in the old wars, and still held by our arms.
It was so upon the great Rock, the commonly counted impregnable
fortress, one of the ancient pillars of Hercules that still stands
silently strong and watchful at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea.
Nowhere did the war fever rage higher than at Gibraltar. Before
everything, a garrison town, battlemented and fortified on every side,
resonant from morning gunfire till watch-setting with martial sounds,
its principal pageants military, with soldiers filling its streets,
and sentinels at every corner, the prospect of active service was
naturally the one theme and topic of the place.
As spring advanced, one of those balmy-scented Southern springs when
flowers highly prized with us blossomed wild everywhere, even in the
fissures of the rock--when the days are already long and bright, under
ever-blue and cloudless skies, Gibraltar realised more fully that war
was close at hand.
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