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
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 fore-legs, bitten as
high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite
paralysed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from
the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when he
remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose, and if he wanted
all his strength and quickness ready, he must keep himself thin.

He went away for a dust-bath under the castor-oil bushes, while
Teddy's father beat the dead Karait. 'What is the use of that?'
thought Rikki-tikki. 'I have settled it all'; and then Teddy's mother
picked him up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved
Teddy from death, and Teddy's father said that he was a providence,
and Teddy looked on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather