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<h2> “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” </h2>
<p>
At the hole where he went in<br/>
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.<br/>
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:<br/>
“Nag, come up and dance with death!”<br/>
<br/>
Eye to eye and head to head,<br/>
(Keep the measure, Nag.)<br/>
This shall end when one is dead;<br/>
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)<br/>
Turn for turn and twist for twist—<br/>
(Run and hide thee, Nag.)<br/>
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!<br/>
(Woe betide thee, Nag!)<br/></p>
<p>This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought
single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee
cantonment. Darzee, the Tailorbird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the
musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always
creeps round by the wall, gave him advice, but Rikki-tikki did the real
fighting.</p>
<p>He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but
quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of
his restless nose were pink. He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased
with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use. He could fluff up his
tail till it looked like a bottle brush, and his war cry as he scuttled
through the long grass was: “Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”</p>
<p>One day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived
with his father and mother, and carried him, kicking and clucking, down a
roadside ditch. He found a little wisp of grass floating there, and clung
to it till he lost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot
sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy
was saying, “Here’s a dead mongoose. Let’s have a funeral.”</p>
<p>“No,” said his mother, “let’s take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn’t
really dead.”</p>
<p>They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his
finger and thumb and said he was not dead but half choked. So they wrapped
him in cotton wool, and warmed him over a little fire, and he opened his
eyes and sneezed.</p>
<p>“Now,” said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the
bungalow), “don’t frighten him, and we’ll see what he’ll do.”</p>
<p>It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is
eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose
family is “Run and find out,” and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He
looked at the cotton wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all
round the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and
jumped on the small boy’s shoulder.</p>
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<p>“Don’t be frightened, Teddy,” said his father. “That’s his way of making
friends.”</p>
<p>“Ouch! He’s tickling under my chin,” said Teddy.</p>
<p>Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy’s collar and neck, snuffed at his
ear, and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose.</p>
<p>“Good gracious,” said Teddy’s mother, “and that’s a wild creature! I
suppose he’s so tame because we’ve been kind to him.”</p>
<p>“All mongooses are like that,” said her husband. “If Teddy doesn’t pick
him up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he’ll run in and out of
the house all day long. Let’s give him something to eat.”</p>
<p>They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely,
and when it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat in the
sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt
better.</p>
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<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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 burned 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 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 he
had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now—”</p>
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<p>But Teddy’s mother wouldn’t think of anything so awful.</p>
<p>Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda
riding on Teddy’s shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled egg.
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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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 fibers, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The
nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.</p>
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<p>“What is the matter?” asked Rikki-tikki.</p>
<p>“We are very miserable,” said Darzee. “One of our babies fell out of the
nest yesterday and Nag ate him.”</p>
<p>“H’m!” said Rikki-tikki, “that is very sad—but I am a stranger here.
Who is Nag?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>“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?”</p>
<p>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 his head a little, and put it on one side.</p>
<p>“Let us talk,” he said. “You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?”</p>
<p>“Behind you! Look behind you!” sang Darzee.</p>
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<p>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. 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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, this 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.</p>
<p>But just as Teddy was stooping, something wriggled 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.</p>
<p>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 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. 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.</p>
<p>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 forelegs, bitten as high up the back as he could
get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralyzed 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.</p>
<p>He went away for a dust bath under the castor-oil bushes, while Teddy’s
father beat the dead Karait. “What is the use of that?” thought
Rikki-tikki. “I have settled it all;” and then Teddy’s mother picked him
up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy from
death, and Teddy’s father said that he was a providence, and Teddy looked
on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss,
which, of course, he did not understand. Teddy’s mother might just as well
have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. Rikki was thoroughly enjoying
himself.</p>
<p>That night at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses on the
table, he might have stuffed himself three times over with nice things.
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!”</p>
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<p>Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki sleeping under
his chin. Rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as
Teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in
the dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the musk-rat, creeping around by
the wall. Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. He whimpers and
cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of
the room. But he never gets there.</p>
<p>“Don’t kill me,” said Chuchundra, almost weeping. “Rikki-tikki, don’t kill
me!”</p>
<p>“Do you think a snake-killer kills muskrats?” said Rikki-tikki scornfully.</p>
<p>“Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,” said Chuchundra, more
sorrowfully than ever. “And how am I to be sure that Nag won’t mistake me
for you some dark night?”</p>
<p>“There’s not the least danger,” said Rikki-tikki. “But Nag is in the
garden, and I know you don’t go there.”</p>
<p>“My cousin Chua, the rat, told me—” said Chuchundra, and then he
stopped.</p>
<p>“Told you what?”</p>
<p>“H’sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua in
the garden.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t—so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or I’ll bite you!”</p>
<p>Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers. “I
am a very poor man,” he sobbed. “I never had spirit enough to run out into
the middle of the room. H’sh! I mustn’t tell you anything. Can’t you hear,
Rikki-tikki?”</p>
<p>Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought he
could just catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world—a noise
as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane—the dry scratch
of a snake’s scales on brick-work.</p>
<p>“That’s Nag or Nagaina,” he said to himself, “and he is crawling into the
bath-room sluice. You’re right, Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“When the house is emptied of people,” said Nagaina to her husband, “he
will have to go away, and then the garden will be our own again. Go in
quietly, and remember that the big man who killed Karait is the first one
to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki
together.”</p>
<p>“But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the
people?” said Nag.</p>
<p>“Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any
mongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and
queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon
bed hatch (as they may tomorrow), our children will need room and quiet.”</p>
<p>“I had not thought of that,” said Nag. “I will go, but there is no need
that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward. I will kill the big man and
his wife, and the child if I can, and come away quietly. Then the bungalow
will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go.”</p>
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