to care much. Kotick spends the next five years seeking an uninhabited beach, until he is finally led to one by a herd of sea cows. When he tells the other seals, they laugh at him, but he fights with his detractors so ferociously that he finally gains the respect of all the seals, who allow him to lead them to safety.

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”

A storm sweeps Rikki-tikki-tavi, the mongoose, into the garden of a bungalow, where he is revived and adopted by an English family. Rikki regards it as his mission to protect the son of the family, Teddy, and soon learns that there are two cobras in the garden, Nag and Nagaina, who want nothing more than for the family and the mongoose to leave. One night, Nag hides in the bathroom, planning to bite the father of the family in the morning. Rikki leaps on Nag, and as they fight, the father, wakened by the noise, shoots the cobra.

The next day, Rikki finds Nagaina’s eggs in the melon bed. As he is smashing them, a bird tells him that Nagaina is threatening Teddy. Rikki rushes to the scene, clutching the last egg. When Nagaina sees the egg, she forgets about Teddy, seizes the egg, and rushes into her lair. Even though it is very dangerous for a mongoose to follow a snake underground, Rikki does so, and he emerges victorious.

Toomai of the Elephants

The old elephant Kala Nag has had three mahouts called Toomai in his lifetime and will have a fourth. Little Toomai, the son of Kala Nag’s current mahout, is a fearless boy who has grown up around elephants. One day, in the stockade where the elephants in government service train the recently captured wild elephants, the end of a rope halter falls to the ground. Toomai jumps into the stockade to retrieve it, an act of reckless courage bordering on folly. This brings him to the notice of Petersen Sahib, the government officer in charge of catching elephants. Petersen is impressed by the boy’s bravery but tells him not to go down into the stockade again until he has seen elephants dance, a proverbial phrase meaning “never.”

That night, Kala Nag takes Toomai to a clearing far from the camp, where many elephants are gathered. They stamp on the ground until it is as flat as a dance floor. When Toomai returns to the camp, he tells Petersen Sahib what he has seen. Petersen Sahib finds the clearing and realizes that Toomai has seen what no man before him has ever witnessed: the dance of the elephants. From this time onward, the boy is no longer known as Little Toomai, but as Toomai of the Elephants.

Her Majesty’s Servants

The narrator of the story has been woken by a camel stampede in his camp, where the troops are preparing for a parade to be reviewed by the Viceroy of India and the Amir of Afghanistan. As he tries to go back to sleep, he hears a group of animals talking. The party consists of mules, horses, bullocks, a camel, and, eventually, an elephant. The animals discuss their training and their experiences of battle. They discover that they all exhibit courage in different ways and are frightened of different things. However, they all obey orders, though they have no idea from where these orders ultimately come.

After the parade, the narrator hears a native officer talking to an Afghan chief. The chief expresses astonishment at the discipline of the animals, and the officer explains that there is a chain of command that runs from the animal and its driver all the way up to the Empress. The chief says that this is not the way things work in Afghanistan, where people do what they want, and the officer replies that this is why the Amir of Afghanistan has to come here to take orders from the Viceroy of India.