‘For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki’s sake I will stop,’ said Darzee.  ‘What is it, O killer of the terrible Nag?’

‘Where is Nagaina, for the third time?’

’On the rubbish-heap by the stables, mourning for Nag.  Great is Rikki-tikki with the white teeth.’

’Bother my white teeth!  Have you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?’

’In the melon-bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes nearly all day.  She hid them three weeks ago.’

’And you never thought it worth while to tell me?  The end nearest the wall, you said?’

‘Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?’

’Not eat exactly; no.  Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly off to the stables and pretend that your wing is broken, and let Nagaina chase you away to this bush!  I must get to the melon-bed, and if I went there now she’d see me.’

Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head; and just because he knew that Nagaina’s children were born in eggs like his own, he didn’t think at first that it was fair to kill them.  But his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra’s eggs meant young cobras later on; so she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of Nag.  Darzee was very like a man in some ways.

She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish-heap, and cried out, ’Oh, my wing is broken!  The boy in the house threw a stone at me and broke it.’  Then she fluttered more desperately than ever.

Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, ’You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have killed him.  Indeed and truly, you’ve chosen 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 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.

Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall.  There, in the warm litter about the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a bantam’s eggs, but with whitish skin instead of shell.

‘I was not a day too soon,’ he said; for he could see the baby cobras curled up inside the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched they could each kill a man or a mongoose.  He bit off the tops of the eggs as fast as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras, and turned over the litter from time to time to see whether he had missed any.  At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikki-tikki began to chuckle to himself, when he heard Darzee’s wife screaming: