‘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.