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