Rikki Tikki Tavi: a summary - RIKKI TIKKI TAVI: A SUMMARY
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Rikki kills Karait.
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 faced in style – red eyes, and step characteristic rocking and swinging, but balanced and multidirectional – this sudden challenge, particularly dangerous because Karait, being small, can turn quickly and can deliver the coup de tail.
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.
Teddy shouted to the house: “Oh, look here! Our mongoose is killing a snake”; and Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy’s mother. His father ran out with a stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out once too far, and Rikki-tikki- had sprung, jumped on the snake’s back, dropped his head far between his fore-legs, bitten as high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralysed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose, and if wanted all his strength and quickness ready, he must keep himself thin.
That night at dinner, he began to apply its strategy: he is not filled with delicacies, but failed to availability, but he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and threw a few times his long war cry: “Rikkitikkrtikkitikki thk!”
Rikki goes hunting for news.
Teddy carried him to bed, but Rikki Tikki, as soon as Teddy was asleep, went out to do his rounds at night around the house, and found Chuchundra, the muskrat, a very cowardly and fearful beast, whimpering all night. The strategy of Rikki Tikki was impeccable: he needed news, that tried to get from the hesitant and whining Chuchundra. Alerted by Chuchundra, Rikki Tikki heard a slight noise, similar to rubbing deaf of the scales of a snake on the bricks, and he realized that he could be or Nag or Nagaina. Then, very quickly, after making sure that all was quiet in the room of Teddy and in the rest of the house, went into the bathroom and he went down the smooth wall plastered with lime where a brick had been taken to open a drain to the bath water, he crept along the wall where rested prominence in the tub, and he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering outside in the moonlight.
“When the house is emptied of people,” said Nagaina to her husband, “he will have to go away, and then the garden will be our own again. Go in quietly, and remember that the big man who killed Karait is the first one to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki together.”
“But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the people?” said Nag.
“Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any mongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon-bed hatch (as they may to-morrow), our children will need room and quiet.”
“I had not thought of that,” said Nag. “I will go, but there is no need that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward. I will kill the big man and his wife, and the child if I can, and come away quietly. The the bungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go.”
Rikki kills Naig.
While Rikki Tikki still trembled from head to foot for rage and indignation at hearing those words, he saw the head of Nag emerge from the duct, and then the five feet in length of its body that followed. Nag coiled himself up, raised his head, and looked into the bath-room in the dark, and Rikki could see his eyes glitter.
Nag drank in the big jug that was used to fill the tub, and then rolled himself around, and R. T. heard him say that he would be there in a cool place until the morning waiting for the father of Teddy, with the purpose to kill him while taking a bath unarmed. Rikki Tikki, who was hidden and motionless as a corpse, after an hour he began to move very slowly toward Nag, who meanwhile had fallen asleep. He considered the various possible types of attacks, and in the end he decided.
“It must be the head,” he said at last; “the head above the hood; and when I am once there, I must not let go.”
Then he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the water-jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave him just one second’s purchase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog — to and fro on the floor, up and down, and round in great circles; but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap-dish and the flesh-brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath.
As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honour of his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a thunderclap just behind him; a hot wind knocked him senseless, and red fire singed his fur. The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a shot-gun into Nag just behind the hood.
Rikki destroys Nagaina’s eggs.
Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki Tikki ran to the bush of thorns: absolutely had to immediately know from Darzee where they were eggs and where he was at that moment Nagaina.
The news of the death of Nag had spread all over the garden, and Darzee sang a hymn of triumph in honor of Rikki Tikki, who repeatedly tried to interrupt him and tried to receive those vital news. But Darzee continued undaunted to sing: resembled very much like a man in some things.
Then Rikki Tikki threatened Darzee much heavily, and so he was able to know that Nagaina had hidden the eggs into poponaia, in the end of the wall where the sun strikes nearly all day. Then Rikki Tikki devised quickly its strategy of attack, and said, “Darzee, if you have a grain of judgment then you should fly to the stables and pretend to have a broken wing and let Nagaina chase from to this bush. I must go to poponaia and if she comes now, she could see me.”
Thinking that his children were born from eggs, Darzee decided not to execute the request for Rikki, but his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra’s eggs become later small cobras. She flew away from the nest, and fluttered in front of Nagaina near at the pile of garbage crying: “Oh! my wing is broken! The boy of the house I pulled a rock and gave it to me broken.”
Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, “You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have killed him. Indeed and truly, you’ve chosed a bad place to be lame in.” And she moved toward Darzee’s wife, slipping along over the dust.
“The boy broke it with a stone! shrieked Darzee’s wife.
“Well! It may be some consolation to you when you’re dead to know that I shall settle accounts with the boy. My husband lies on the rubbish-heap this morning, but before the night the boy in the house will lie very still. 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.
After making sure that they took the avenue of the stables, Rikki Tikki raced down the poponaia near the end of the wall, and there he found twenty-five eggs very cleverly hidden. He had almost destroyed all the eggs, when he heard his wife screaming that unfortunately Darzee Nagaina had direct to the porch and threatened to kill the owners of the house. Then Rikki Tikki crushed two of the three remaining eggs, and ran like lightning with the third egg in his mouth to the porch, where he saw Nagaina curled up on the mat at Teddy’s chair, just a shot of the bare leg of the boy, who was rocking back and forth singing a song of triumph.
