last of my eggs, and I will go away and never come back," she said,
lowering her hood.

"Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back. For you will go
to the rubbish heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone for his
gun! Fight!"

Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach
of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals. Nagaina gathered herself
together and flung out at him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again
and again and again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack
on the matting of the veranda and she gathered herself together like a
watch spring. Then Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind her, and
Nagaina spun round to keep her head to his head, so that the rustle of
her tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind.

He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and Nagaina came
nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was drawing
breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and
flew like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When
the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whip-lash flicked across a
horse's neck.

Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin
again. She headed straight for the long grass by the thorn-bush, and as
he was running Rikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish little
song of triumph. But Darzee's wife was wiser. She flew off her nest
as Nagaina came along, and flapped her wings about Nagaina's head. If
Darzee had helped they might have turned her, but Nagaina only lowered
her hood and went on. Still, the instant's delay brought Rikki-tikki up
to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag used to
live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he went down
with her--and very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be,
care to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole; and
Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to
turn and strike at him. He held on savagely, and stuck out his feet to
act as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth.

Then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and Darzee said,
"It is all over with Rikki-tikki! We must sing his death song. Valiant
Rikki-tikki is dead! For Nagaina will surely kill him underground."

So he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the spur of the
minute, and