This is a story about Hans van der Meer, a Dutch boy, who at fourteen is shipwrecked on the island of Ceylon, and whose remarkable gift for making friends with wild animals leads him into captivity at the Court of the King of Kandy. It was a time when Dutch were battling for supremacy over Portuguese, and when the Veddas, the aboriginal tribesmen, lived there own life in the dense jungle much as they do today. There is incident and excitement in this story of adventure, but outstanding are the vivid descriptions of bird, animal and aboriginal life as it was lived under the savage law of the jungle: an attack by an infuriated mother bear with cubs, the trapping of an elusive leopard, a battle to the death between python and crocodile.