days, when after
observing the country for some time, he broke out: 'There is where I
should put my artillery.' 'There is where I should put my cavalry' and
so on to the journey's end."

In spite of these evidences of a soldier's eye for country, there is
nothing to show that French had developed any abnormal devotion for
his work. He was interested but not absorbed. In 1880 a captaincy and
his marriage probably did something to make him take his career more
seriously. His wife, Lady French, was a daughter of Mr. R.W.
Selby-Lowndes, of Bletchley, Bucks. They have two sons and a daughter.

A few months after his marriage he accepted an adjutancy in the
Northumberland Yeomanry. For four uneventful years he was stationed at
Newcastle, where the work was monotonous and the opportunities almost
_nil_.

[Page Heading: THE WAITING GAME]

Naturally the young man fretted very much at being left behind with
the Yeomanry when his regiment was ordered to embark for Egypt in
1882. And he never rested until he was allowed to follow it out in
1884. It was in many ways a new 19th which the young officer re-joined
in Egypt. The regiment hurried out in 1882 had at last come under a
commander of real genius in Colonel Percy Barrow, C.B., and in that
commander French was to find his first real military inspiration. It
is difficult to judge what his future might have been but for this one
man and the Nile Expedition, which proved the turning point in
French's career as it did in that of his regiment.

Then, as ever, French was a man who had to wait for his opportunities.
He was thirty-two years of age before he saw this, his first piece of
active service. Where Kitchener found, or made, opportunities for
military experience, French was content to wait the turn of events. So
it has been all through his life. He has never forestalled Destiny; he
has simply accepted its call. But when an opportunity presented itself
he always seized it, and the Nile Expedition was no exception to the
rule. Major French, without Staff College training, without the usual
diplomas, was to prove himself once and for all a master tactician.

CHAPTER II

WITH THE NILE EXPEDITION

A Forlorn Hope--Scouting in the Desert--The Battle of Abu
Klea--Metammeh--The Death of Gordon--A Dangerous
Retreat--"Major French and His Thirteen Troopers."

Sir John French's first experience of actual warfare was a bitter one.
If ever the British Governme