Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's killing of Nag is the turning-point battle of the bungalow's struggle against the cobras. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi overhears a plan to murder the people, attacks the much larger cobra in the bathroom sluice, and refuses to release his bite even while Nag thrashes him across the floor. The big man's shotgun kills Nag, but Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's initiative and grip make the rescue possible. The event changes the garden's balance of power, saves the human household from an immediate ambush, and leaves Rikki-Tikki-Tavi facing Nagaina as the remaining and more dangerous enemy.\n\n## Causes and Background\nNag enters the bathroom sluice after Nagaina explains the cobras' larger objective. Once the bungalow is emptied, she argues, the garden will belong to them again; the hatching eggs in the melon bed will also require room and quiet. Nag therefore intends to kill the big man, his wife, and Teddy if possible, then leave quietly so that the bungalow will stand empty and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi will be forced to go. The planned attack is not a private act of predation but an attempt to remove the human presence that has enabled the mongoose to live in and defend the garden.\n\nRikki-Tikki-Tavi reaches the bathroom after interpreting the faint scratching of scales on brickwork. He first searches Teddy's bathroom and then Teddy's mother's bathroom, where a brick has been removed from the smooth plaster wall to form a sluice for bath water. From the masonry curb he hears Nag and Nagaina whispering outside in the moonlight. Their conversation gives him both the immediate stakes and the enemy's timetable: Nag will wait in the cool bathroom until daytime, when the big man is expected to bathe without the stick he had used when Karait was killed.\n\n## The Confrontation in the Bathroom\nNag's entrance transforms the danger from a concealed plan into a physical crisis. His five feet of cold body follows his head through the sluice, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is frightened by the cobra's size even as rage and hatred drive him toward action. He recognizes that an open fight would favor Nag and that a premature attack would alert Nagaina. The scene therefore turns on a narrow tactical problem: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi must find a point where a small mongoose can hold a much larger snake.\n\nWhile Nag drinks from the largest water jar used to fill the bath, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi waits. When Nag coils around the jar's bulging base and falls asleep, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi advances muscle by muscle and studies the possible targets. A bite into the thick neck below the hood would not give him enough advantage; a bite near the tail would only make Nag more savage. He concludes that the head above the hood is the only viable target and commits himself to holding on once he has reached it.\n\nRikki-Tikki-Tavi jumps when Nag's head lies slightly clear of the jar. His teeth close on the head, and he braces his back against the red earthenware so that the jar gives him a brief purchase. Nag then batters him from side to side like a rat shaken by a dog, dragging him across the floor and striking the tin dipper, soap dish, flesh brush, and bath. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi tightens his jaws rather than release them, believing that death with his teeth locked would preserve the honor of his family. His body is being overwhelmed, but his refusal to let go prevents Nag from escaping or turning the attack into a defeat.\n\n## The Shotgun and the Value Shift\nThe fight appears to be moving toward Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's death until the noise wakes the big man. A shotgun blast erupts just behind the mongoose; both barrels strike Nag behind the hood, and the hot wind knocks Rikki-Tikki-Tavi senseless while red fire singes his fur. The human weapon supplies the force that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's bite alone may not have been able to produce, but it is effective only because Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has already seized the cobra's head and held him in place.\n\nThe scene's central value shifts from threatened household life to immediate safety. Nag's plan had been to kill the family while the bungalow was unguarded by its human weapons; instead, the cobra's attack brings the big man into the bathroom and allows the shotgun to destroy him. The big man recognizes the result when he picks up Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and tells Alice that the mongoose has saved their lives again. Teddy's mother then sees what remains of Nag, while Rikki-Tikki-Tavi drags himself to Teddy's bedroom and spends much of the night testing his battered body.\n\n## Consequences and Aftermath\nBy morning Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is stiff but pleased with what he has accomplished. The killing protects the household and removes Nag from the garden's immediate chain of command, yet it does not end the conflict. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi knows that Nagaina remains to be dealt with and judges her worse than five Nags. His victory is therefore both conclusion and beginning: it closes the first cobra assault while making the eggs in the melon bed the next urgent threat.\n\nThe event also exposes how closely the bungalow's domestic spaces are tied to the garden's violent political struggle. The bathwater sluice, the jar, the soap dish, and the bath become the arena in which the household's safety is decided. Nag seeks to turn an ordinary morning bath into an assassination opportunity; Rikki-Tikki-Tavi turns the same space into an ambush against him. The human family survives not because the danger stays outside, but because Rikki-Tikki-Tavi carries the defense into the hidden passage where the danger enters.\n\n## Narrative Significance\nThe killing establishes Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as an active guardian rather than a passive household pet. He listens, investigates, reconstructs the cobras' intention, waits for a favorable opening, chooses the head as the only effective target, and accepts the physical cost of maintaining the attack. His courage is inseparable from calculation: the mongoose wins not by ignoring fear or size, but by recognizing both and acting within their limits.\n\nThe episode also gives Nag's death a collaborative structure. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi initiates and sustains the decisive hold; the big man supplies the gunshot that ends the struggle; the household's survival is the consequence of their actions working together. Yet the narrative does not reduce the mongoose's achievement to the weapon. Without Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's bite, Nag would remain concealed beside the bath until the planned attack could begin. The victory belongs to the creature who identifies the danger and holds it fast long enough for help to arrive.