Word: rockingly
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They were as ready as British ingenuity and foresight could make them. Their cisterns, filled with rain water from great catchments on the Rock's steep eastern side, held 140,000,000 gallons of water...
...through the 18th Century, the Spanish tried to get the Rock back. In 1779-83 they and the French besieged it continuously, finally gave up when their fleet of ships reinforced with green timber, cork and rawhide was set afire by red-hot British cannonballs. In that long siege, British General Sir George Elliot lost in action only 333 out of 7,000 men in the face of attackers totaling 40,000. Britain offered to trade Gibraltar for Florida or for Minorca, but the Spanish refused. Spain offered to buy it for $10,000,000 and the British refused...
...north the Rock's sheerest face rises above a flat sandy neck, where the British troops drill and play rugby in peacetime. This bit of ground is too small for an airfield and is separated by heavy barbed wire and land mines from the border town of La Linea de la Concepcion alive with Spanish artillery, troops and prostitutes. From this quarter even a horde of German shock troops would have difficulty storming the British guns trained from camouflaged, cement-lined galleries that are cut deep enough (by General Sir Edmund Ironside, the Rock's former commandant...
...Rock bristles with Europe's most concentrated anti-aircraft installation...
When Captain Groves, bronzed in the service of the No. 1 U. S. Mediterranean ship operator, leaves the Rock, a fat slice of international trade will...