keeping him awake. He does not care that they might belong to someone; they are disturbing him, so they must die.

When Morrowbie's pony runs away with him, however, he finds himself in a large crater, and he cannot climb out. Soon several dozen Indians approach Morrowbie. They are led by Gunga Dass, someone whom Morrowbie has apparently abused in the past. Gunga and the others nearly died during a cholera outbreak. In fact, they were supposed to die, for when the officials realized they were not dead, they tried to suffocate these unfortunate people. Those who didn't die even then were thrown into the crater, never to be allowed out. To the officials, they are not human beings, but merely objects to be disposed of.

These people, however, have set up their own society in the crater, and they now put Morrowbie firmly in his place. They kill and eat his pony, and Gunga Dass takes his money and tells Morrowbie that the latter will now serve him. Morrowbie has gone from master to servant, and he will now see what it feels like to be oppressed. Gunga Dass, he learns, has killed other Britons who have fallen into the crater, and he likely would not hesitate to kill Morrowbie also. When Morrowbie finds a paper with instructions on how to escape the crater, Gunga Dass immediately takes it from him and strikes him on the head, knocking him unconscious.

Morrowbie is ultimately saved by his servant Dunnoo, who drops a rope down to Morrowbie, pulls him to safety, and tells him how to get home. Morrowbie now owes his life to a servant, but the audience is left to wonder if he will learn anything from his experiences.

In Rudyard Kipling’s The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes, the protagonist is Morrowbie Jukes. He is an ordinary English engineer living in India. He is overtaken by a fever which leaves him a bit delirious and restless. Therefore he mounts a horse and takes a midnight ride into the desert where he is thrust into an Indian leper village that exists in a sand crater. He searches for a way out but finds none that are not wrought with quicksand. Feeling desperation and the need to exert his superiority to the Indians he proceeds to knock out a number of them. He is intent on showing that he is a member of the dominant English race but since this colony is cut off from the world, and there is little chance of escape, Jukes becomes despondent in his surroundings. He is no longer one of the superiors; he has to learn to survive in the colony, a “survival of the fittest” situation.