Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals.  Nagaina gathered herself together, and flung out at him.  Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward.  Again and again and again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack on the matting of the verandah, and she gathered herself together like a watch-spring.  Then Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind her, and Nagaina spun round to keep her head to his head, so that the rustle of her tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind.

He had forgotten the egg.  It still lay on the verandah, and Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the verandah steps and flew like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her.  When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whip-lash flicked across a horse’s neck.

Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin again.  She headed straight for the long grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was running Rikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish little song of triumph.  But Darzee’s wife was wiser.  She flew off her nest as Nagaina came along and flapped her wings about Nagaina’s head.  If Darzee had helped they might have turned her; but Nagaina only lowered her hood and went on.  Still, the instant’s delay brought Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag used to live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he went down with her—­and very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to follow a cobra into its hole.  It was dark in the hole; and Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him.  He held on savagely, and struck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth.

Then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and Darzee said:  ’It is all over with Rikki-tikki!  We must sing his death-song.  Valiant Rikki-tikki is dead!  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.  ‘It is all over,’ he said.  ’The widow will never come out again.’  And the red ants that live between the grass stems heard him, and began to troop down one after another to see if he had spoken the truth.

Rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept where he was—­slept and slept till it was late in the afternoon, for he had done a hard day’s work.

‘Now,’ he said, when he awoke, ’I will go back to the house.  Tell the Coppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell the garden that Nagaina is dead.’