Beasts Royal : Twelve Tales of Adventure

On the indigo waters of the South Sea, the crew of a schooner are attacked by a man-eating tiger-shark. In the humid depths of the African jungle, a 30-foot python plots to rid himself of his rival, a wily old crocodile. And, amid the heat and dust of the Punjab, the snake-charmer Hussein escapes into the forest on the elephant that he trained when a mahout in his youth. Told with the dry wit and unsentimental precision Patrick O'Brian came to be loved for, the drama and tragedies of the natural world unfold in these 12 tales of animal adventure, first published together in 1934.