Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (Campfire Story)

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bathrooms of a big house in India.

Rikki-tikki was a mongoose. He was rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink. And his war cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: RIKKI TIKKI!

One day, a summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived with his mother and carried him, half-drowned, into a garden. A small boy named Teddy found him on the path. 'Here's a dead mongoose,' he said. 'Let's have a funeral!'

'No,' said his mother. 'Let's take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn't really dead.' They wrapped him in cotton wool and warmed him by the fire. And Rikki-tikki sneezed, opened his eyes, and ran all around the table and up onto Teddy's shoulder. Every mongoose is eaten up with curiosity from nose to tail, and the motto of all the mongoose family is, 'Run and find out.' So he decided to stay.

The next morning, Rikki-tikki went out to explore the garden. In a thornbush, he found DARZEE the tailorbird and his wife, crying over their nest. 'One of our babies fell out yesterday,' sobbed Darzee, 'and Nag ate him.'

'Who is Nag?' asked Rikki-tikki.

From the thick grass behind him came a low, cold sound. COBRA. And up rose the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, five feet long from tongue to tail. 'I am Nag,' he hissed. 'Look, and be afraid.'

Rikki-tikki was afraid, for a moment. But he was a young mongoose, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life was to fight and eat snakes. 'Marks or no marks,' he said, 'do you think it is right for you to eat baby birds out of a nest?'

And while Nag was talking, his wife Nagaina was creeping up silently behind Rikki-tikki to strike. 'Behind you! Look behind you!' sang DARZEE. Rikki-tikki jumped straight up into the air, just as Nagaina's head struck the ground where he had been. COBRA! He came down almost on her back, bit, and leapt away, and both cobras vanished into the grass.

That night, Rikki-tikki heard the muskrat Chuchundra creeping along the wall, crying. 'Don't kill me, Rikki-tikki! I'm only going to tell you something. Nag is coming into the house tonight.'

Rikki-tikki listened. Through the dark he heard the faintest scratch-scratch on the bathroom brickwork. Nag was sliding in through the drain. And Rikki-tikki heard him whisper to Nagaina outside: 'When there are no people in this house, the mongoose will have to go away, and the garden will be ours again. I'll wait here in the cool, and when the big man comes in to bathe in the morning, I'll strike.' COBRA.

Nag coiled himself around the bottom of the big water jar in the bathroom and went to sleep. Rikki-tikki stayed as still as a stone for an hour. Then he crept, inch by inch, toward the jar. 'I must get him by the head,' he said to himself, 'and when I have him, I must not let go.'

He jumped. RIKKI TIKKI! He caught Nag just behind the hood, set his teeth, and held on. Nag whipped him back and forth like a rat shaken by a dog, banging him against the jar and the floor and the walls. But Rikki-tikki shut his eyes and held on tighter, sure he was going to be banged to death, and quite sure he would not let go. COBRA! RIKKI TIKKI!

Then there was a great BANG, and Rikki-tikki was thrown across the room. The big man, Teddy's father, woken by the noise, had come running with his gun. Nag was finished. The man picked up the dizzy little mongoose and said, 'It's the mongoose again. The little chap has saved all our lives.'

But Nagaina was still out there. And she had eggs, a whole nest of cobra eggs, hidden in the melon bed. In a week they would hatch into baby cobras.

The next morning, Rikki-tikki asked DARZEE for help. Darzee was too foolish to understand the plan, but Darzee's wife was wise. She fluttered right in front of Nagaina, pretending her wing was broken. 'Oh, my wing! The boy broke it with a stone!' And Nagaina, furious and wanting revenge on someone, chased after her away from the melon bed. DARZEE!

Rikki-tikki raced to the eggs and began to crack them, one after another, as fast as he could. He had just three left when Darzee's wife screamed, 'Rikki-tikki! Nagaina has gone into the house! She's on the veranda! She is going to strike!'

Rikki-tikki snatched up the last egg in his mouth and ran. On the veranda, Teddy and his mother and father sat frozen at the breakfast table. Their faces were white. Nagaina was coiled up on the matting beside Teddy's chair, her head swaying, within easy striking distance of his bare leg. COBRA. 'Sit still,' she hissed. 'If you move, I strike. If you don't move, I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my Nag!'

'Turn round, Nagaina!' cried Rikki-tikki. 'Turn and fight!' He set the egg down between his paws. 'What price for a snake's egg? For the very last of your eggs?'

Nagaina spun around. And in that moment, Teddy's father reached out, caught Teddy by the shoulder, and dragged him across the table, safe out of reach.

'Tricked!' laughed Rikki-tikki. RIKKI TIKKI!

Nagaina snatched up her egg and fled like an arrow down the path toward her hole. Rikki-tikki raced after her, and as she slid down into the dark hole in the ground, he grabbed her tail with his little teeth and went down with her.

Darzee began to sing a sad song. Very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to follow a cobra into its hole. The garden was silent. The grass by the hole stopped moving. And everyone waited.

Then the grass began to quiver again, and out of the hole came Rikki-tikki, covered in dirt, licking his whiskers. 'It is all over,' he said. 'Nagaina will never come out again.'

And the red ants that live in the grass heard him, and began to march down the hole to see if he had spoken the truth.

From then on, Rikki-tikki lived with Teddy's family, and he kept the garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls. And if you ever hear a strange little cry from the long grass in an Indian garden, you'll know who is on guard.

RIKKI TIKKI!

Storyteller tips: this is a shortened version; Kipling's original is much longer and wonderful to read over several nights. Save the biggest RIKKI TIKKI war cry for the very end.

Talk it over afterward: Rikki-tikki was afraid of Nag at first. What did he do anyway? How is that like the Scout Law's "brave"?