his whiskers.
"I am a very poor man," he sobbed. "I never had spirit enough to run out
into the middle of the room. H'sh! I mustn't tell you anything. Can't
you hear, Rikki-tikki?"

Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought he
could just catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world--a noise as
faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane--the dry scratch of a
snake's scales on brick-work.

"That's Nag or Nagaina," he said to himself, "and he is crawling into
the bath-room sluice. You're right, Chuchundra; I should have talked to
Chua."

He stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then
to Teddy's mother's bathroom. At the bottom of the smooth plaster wall
there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath water, and as
Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard
Nag and Nagaina whispering together 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 tomorrow), 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. Then the
bungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go."

Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and then
Nag's head came through the sluice, and his five feet of cold body
followed it. Angry as he was, Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw
the size of the big cobra. Nag coiled himself up, raised his head,
and looked into the bathroom in the dark, and Rikki could see his eyes
glitter.

"Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him on
the open floor, the odds are in his favor. What am I to do?" said
Rikki-tikki-tavi.

Nag waved to and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking from