kes 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.

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 his 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.

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 forelegs, bitten as high up the back
as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralyzed Karait, and