Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Part One · The Flood

One summer, a great flood swept a young mongoose out of the burrow where he lived with his mother He was carried, kicking and clucking, along a roadside ditch, until the water finally deposited him, half drowned and soaking wet, in the middle of a garden path. His name was Rikki-tikki-tavi, because of the peculiar war cry he gave whenever he was excited. He resembled a small cat in his fur and tail, and a weasel in his head and his habits, and his eyes were a bright, restless pink. He could also scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, which was a great talent.

A small boy named Teddy discovered him lying there and announced, rather solemnly, that they ought to have a funeral. His mother, however, suggested that they take the creature inside and dry him, because perhaps he wasn't really dead. They wrapped him in cotton wool and warmed him beside the fire, and presently he opened his eyes and sneezed. The motto of the entire mongoose family is "Run and find out," and Rikki-tikki was a genuine mongoose. He raced across the table, sat up to inspect Teddy with enormous interest, and then jumped onto the boy's shoulder to investigate his ear.

He spent the whole day exploring the bungalow. He nearly drowned himself in a bathtub. He dipped his nose into the ink on a writing desk, and he singed it on the end of a cigar, simply to discover how everything worked. At bedtime he climbed into Teddy's bed without asking anyone's permission. Teddy's mother worried anxiously that he might bite the child, but his father explained that a mongoose was the best guard a boy could possibly have. "If a snake came into this room tonight," he said, "Rikki-tikki would know about it long before any of us."

Part Two · Nag and Nagaina

The next morning Rikki-tikki ventured out into the garden. It was large and only partly planted, with rose bushes as big as summer houses, lime and orange trees, and dense thickets of bamboo and tall grass. He licked his lips with satisfaction and declared that it was a splendid hunting ground. Then a sad sound drifted out of a thorn bush. Darzee the tailorbird and his wife were sitting there beside their beautiful nest, which they had stitched together from two enormous leaves. They were weeping, because one of their babies had tumbled out of the nest the previous day, and Nag had eaten it.

"Who is Nag?" asked Rikki-tikki, but Darzee and his wife only cowered in their nest without answering. From the thick grass beneath the bush came a low, cold hiss that made Rikki-tikki spring backward a full two feet. Inch by inch, out of the grass, rose the head and the spreading hood of Nag, the great black cobra. He was five feet long from his tongue to the tip of his tail. When he had lifted a third of his body off the ground, he stayed there, swaying gently to and fro. He studied Rikki-tikki with wicked eyes that never changed their expression, whatever the snake happened to be thinking.

"Who is Nag?" he repeated. "I am Nag. Look, and be afraid!" Rikki-tikki was frightened for one moment, but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for very long. Although he had never encountered a living cobra before, his mother had taught him everything about them. He understood that the main business of a grown mongoose's life was to fight and defeat snakes, Nag understood it too. That is why, at the bottom of his cold heart, he was nervous. So he kept Rikki-tikki talking, because behind the mongoose, silently and patiently, his wife Nagaina was creeping up through the grass.

"Behind you! Look behind you!" sang Darzee, and Rikki-tikki leaped straight up into the air, as high as he could possibly go, so that Nagaina's head whizzed harmlessly past just underneath him. He landed almost across her back, but he was too young and untried to know how to finish such a fight, and she lashed herself free and disappeared. Then both of the snakes vanished into the grass. Rikki-tikki did not chase them. He was sensible enough to sit down and think, and he realized that he must be extremely careful from now on, since two cobras would never surrender a garden easily.

Part Three · The Bathroom

That night, while Rikki-tikki was patrolling the darkened house, he met Chuchundra the muskrat creeping along beside the wall. Chuchundra was a timid creature who never found the courage to run out into the middle of a room. "Don't hurt me!" he whimpered, and then, trembling, he whispered a warning. Nag was coming into the house that very night, he said, and surely Rikki-tikki could hear him. Rikki-tikki listened hard. The house was perfectly silent. But he thought he could just detect the faintest scratching in the world, like a wasp walking on a windowpane, somewhere near the bathroom.

He crept to the bathroom, and there in the darkness he overheard Nag and Nagaina whispering together outside the drain. Their plan was simple and terrible. If the family were gone, Nagaina explained, then the mongoose would have to leave. The garden would belong to the cobras once again, and their babies could hatch in perfect safety. So Nag slid in through the drain and coiled himself around the bottom of the big water jar. He settled down to wait for the morning, when Teddy's father would come in to bathe. Rikki-tikki remained as still as a stone for a whole hour.

At last Nag fell asleep, and Rikki-tikki carefully considered the great broad back, choosing his position close behind the hood, where the snake could not reach him. Then he jumped, and held on. Nag awoke and thrashed furiously, swinging him to and fro like a rat shaken by a dog. Up and down they went, and around in great circles, knocking over the tin dipper and the soap dish, while Rikki-tikki closed his eyes and held on even tighter, convinced that he would be battered to pieces. Suddenly there was a tremendous crash behind him. Teddy's father, woken by the noise, had come running with a heavy stick. Between the two of them the fight was finished, and Nag lay still at last.

Part Four · The Melon Bed

Rikki-tikki was stiff and sore the next morning, but extremely pleased with himself. Darzee was singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice, which irritated Rikki-tikki considerably, because Nagaina was still free and more dangerous than ever. He demanded to know where her eggs were hidden. Darzee's wife, who was much more sensible than her husband, told him that they were buried in the melon bed, near the wall, where the sunshine was hottest all day long. Then she courageously pretended to have a broken wing, fluttering helplessly along the ground near the house, so that Nagaina would follow her and leave the nest unguarded.

Rikki-tikki raced to the melon bed, where twenty-five eggs, about the size of a bantam's, lay hidden under the straw, with whitish leathery skins instead of shells. He had arrived just in time. He could already see the tiny cobras curled up inside them, so he destroyed the eggs one after another, until only a single egg remained. Then he heard Darzee's wife screaming desperately. She had led Nagaina toward the house, she cried. Now the snake had slithered onto the veranda, where the family was eating breakfast. Rikki-tikki must come at once, because Nagaina meant to strike!

On the veranda, Teddy and his parents were sitting frozen at the breakfast table. Nagaina was coiled on the mat beside Teddy's chair, swaying, within easy striking distance of his bare leg. Rikki-tikki came racing up the path with the last egg held carefully in his mouth, and he called out to Nagaina to turn around and fight. Nagaina spun around, saw her precious egg, and forgot everything else. In that instant, Teddy's father seized the boy by the shoulder and dragged him safely across the table, out of her reach. "Give me the egg," Nagaina hissed, "and I will go away and never come back."

But Rikki-tikki knew perfectly well that a promise from Nagaina was worth absolutely nothing. He danced around her, always keeping just out of reach. At last she snatched up the egg and fled like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki close behind her. She shot into the old rat-hole where she and Nag used to live, and Rikki-tikki followed her bravely into the darkness. Darzee began a mournful song, certain that his friend was lost forever. But after a long and dreadful minute, the grass quivered. Rikki-tikki dragged himself out of the hole, licking his whiskers, and announced that it was all over, and that Nagaina would never come out again.

When Rikki-tikki returned to the house, Teddy's mother, still pale from her terrible fright, cried over him. Teddy's father declared that the little mongoose had saved all of their lives. That evening he ate everything that was offered to him until he could not possibly eat any more, and then he went to sleep on Teddy's shoulder. He never became too proud or too lazy. He protected the garden exactly as a mongoose should protect it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, until not a single cobra ever dared to show its head inside the garden walls again.