The Kipling Reader | Page 2

felt
better.
'There are more things to find out about in this house,' he said to
himself, 'than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall
certainly stay and find out.'
He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned
himself in the bath tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing-table, and
burnt it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big
man's lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy's
nursery to watch how the kerosene-lamps were lighted, and when
Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a restless
companion, because he had to get up and attend to every noise all

through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy's mother and father
came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake
on the pillow. 'I don't like that,' said Teddy's mother; 'he may bite the
child.' 'He'll do no such thing,' said the father. 'Teddy's safer with that
little beast than if ho had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came
into the nursery now----'
But Teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so awful.
Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast-in the
verandah riding on Teddy's shoulder, and they gave him banana and
some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other, because
every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a
house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and
Rikki-tikki's mother (she used to live in the General's house at
Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across
white men.
Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen. It
was a large garden, only half cultivated, with bushes as big as
summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of
bamboos, and thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. 'This is
a splendid hunting-ground,' he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at
the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden, snuffing here
and there till he heard very sorrowful voices in a thorn-bush.
It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful
nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges
with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The
nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.
'What is the matter?' asked Rikki-tikki.
'We are very miserable,' said Darzee. 'One of our babies fell out of the
nest yesterday, and Nag ate him.'
'H'm!' said Rikki-tikki, 'that is very sad--but I am a stranger here. Who
is Nag?'

Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering,
for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss--a
horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then
inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag,
the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When
he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed
balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind,
and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never
change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.
'Who is Nag?' said he. 'I am Nag. The great god Brahm put his mark
upon all our people when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun
off Brahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!'
He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the
spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a
hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute; but it is
impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time,
and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother
had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's
business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too, and at
the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.
'Well,' said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, 'marks or no
marks, do you think it is right for you to eat fledglings out of a nest?'
Nag was thinking to himself, and watching the least little movement in
the grass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew that mongooses in the garden
meant death sooner or later for him and his family, but he wanted to get
Rikki-tikki off his guard. So he dropped