What is the use of running away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool,
look at me!
Darzee s wife knew better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a
snake s eyes gets so frightened that she cannot move. Darzee s wife
fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and
Nagaina quickened her pace.
Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced
for the end of the melon patch near the wall. There, in the warm litter
above the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs,
about the size of a bantam s eggs, but with whitish skin instead of
shell.
I was not a day too soon, he said, for he could see the baby cobras
curled up inside the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched
they could each kill a man or a mongoose. He bit off the tops of the
eggs as fast as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras, and
turned over the litter from time to time to see whether he had missed
any. At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikki-tikki began to
chuckle to himself, when he heard Darzee s wife screaming:
Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the house, and she has gone into the
veranda, and--oh, come quickly--she means killing!
Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed
with the third egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the veranda as hard as
he could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were
there at early breakfast, but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating
anything. They sat stone-still, and their faces were white. Nagaina was
coiled up on the matting by Teddy s chair, within easy striking distance
of Teddy s bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro, singing a song of
triumph.
Son of the big man that killed Nag, she hissed, stay still. I am not
ready yet. Wait a little. Keep very still, all you three! If you move I
strike, and if you do not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed
my Nag!
Teddy s eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father could do was
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