The Kipling Reader | Page 3

his head a little, and put it on
one side.
'Let us talk,' he said. 'You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?'
'Behind you! Look behind you!' sang Darzee.
Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. He jumped up in
the air as high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head

of Nagaina, Nag's wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as he was
talking, to make an end of him; and he heard her savage hiss as the
stroke missed. He came down almost across her back, and if he had
been an old mongoose he would have known that then was the time to
break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing
return-stroke of the cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bite long enough,
and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn and
angry.
'Wicked, wicked Darzee!' said Nag, lashing up as high as he could
reach toward the nest in the thorn-bush; but Darzee had built it out of
reach of snakes, and it only swayed to and fro.
Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose's eyes
grow red, he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind legs like a
little kangaroo, and looked all round him, and chattered with rage. But
Nag and Nagaina had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses
its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to
do next. Rikki-tikki did not care to follow them, for he did not feel sure
that he could manage two snakes at once. So he trotted off to the gravel
path near the house, and sat down to think. It was a serious matter for
him.
If you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say that
when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs
off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true. The victory is
only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot,--snake's blow
against mongoose's jump,--and as no eye can follow the motion of a
snake's head when it strikes, that makes things much more wonderful
than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose, and
it made him all the more pleased to think that he had managed to
escape a blow from behind. It gave him confidence in himself, and
when Teddy came running down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be
petted.
But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust,
and a tiny voice said: 'Be careful. I am death!' It was Karait, the dusty
brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is

as dangerous as the cobra's. But he is so small that nobody thinks of
him, and so he does the more harm to people.
Rikki-tikki's eyes grew red again, and he danced up to Karait with the
peculiar rocking, swaying motion that he had inherited from his family.
It looks very funny, but it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you can
fly off from it at any angle you please; and in dealing with snakes this
is an advantage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a much
more dangerous thing than fighting Nag, for Karait is so small, and can
turn so quickly, that unless Rikki bit him close to the back of the head,
he would get the return-stroke in his eye or lip. But Rikki did not know:
his eyes were all red, and he rocked back and forth, looking for a good
place to hold. Karait struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run
in, but the wicked little dusty gray head lashed within a fraction of his
shoulder, and he had to jump over the body, and the head followed his
heels close.
Teddy shouted to the house: 'Oh, look here! Our mongoose is killing a
snake'; and Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy's mother. His father
ran out with a stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out
once too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake's back,
dropped his head far between his fore-legs, bitten as high up the back
as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralysed Karait, and
Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom
of his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a
slow mongoose, and if he wanted all his strength and quickness ready,
he must keep himself thin.
He went away for a dust-bath under the castor-oil bushes,