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.

“Let us talk,” he said.  “You eat eggs.  Why should not I eat birds?”

“Behind you!  Look behind you!” sang Darzee.

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.

“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, 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.

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.