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Updated: June 6, 2025
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 his 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.
Come and fight with me. You shall not be a widow long. Nagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and the egg lay between Rikki-tikki's paws. 'Give me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I will go away and never come back, she said, lowering her hood. 'Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back; for you will go to the rubbish-heap with Nag.
He stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then to Teddy's mother's bathroom. At the bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath water, and as Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering together outside in the moonlight.
They dare not move, and if you come a step nearer I strike." "Look at your eggs," said Rikki-tikki, "in the melon bed near the wall. Go and look, Nagaina!" The big snake turned half around, and saw the egg on the veranda. "Ah-h! Give it to me," she said. Rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and his eyes were blood-red. "What price for a snake's egg? For a young cobra?
"Just think, he saved all our lives." Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for the mongooses are light sleepers. "Oh, it's you," said he. "What are you bothering for? All the cobras are dead. And if they weren't, I'm here." Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself.
The news of Nag's death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body on the rubbish-heap. 'Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers! said Rikki-tikki angrily. 'Is this the time to sing? 'Nag is dead is dead is dead! sang Darzee. 'The valiant Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast. The big man brought the bang-stick, and Nag fell in two pieces!
For Nagaina will surely kill him underground. So he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the spur of the minute, and just as he got to the most touching part the grass quivered again, and Rikki-tikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the hole leg by leg, licking his whiskers. Darzee stopped with a little shout. Rikki-tikki shook some of the dust out of his fur and sneezed.
But he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be patted and petted by Teddy's mother, and to sit on Teddy's shoulder, his eyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off into his long war cry of "Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!" Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki sleeping under his chin.
Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, "You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have killed him. Indeed and truly, you've chosen a bad place to be lame in." And she moved toward Darzee's wife, slipping along over the dust. "The boy broke it with a stone!" shrieked Darzee's wife. "Well! It may be some consolation to you when you're dead to know that I shall settle accounts with the boy.
He may have that stick still, but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he will not have a stick. I shall wait here till he comes. Nagaina do you hear me? I shall wait here in the cool till daytime. There was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew Nagaina had gone away.
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