- [opening narration]
- Narrator: This is the story of the great war that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi fought single-handed through the bathrooms of the big bungalow in Sugauli cantonment in India. Darzee, the tailorbird, helped him. And Chuchundra, the muskrat, who never comes out in the middle of the floor but always creeps around by the wall, gave him advice. But Rikki did the real fighting.
- [closing narration]
- Narrator: Rikki had a right to be proud of himself. But he did not grow too proud. And he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite till never a cobra dared showed its head inside the wall.
- Nagaina the Cobra, Wife of Nag: Son of the man that killed Nag... If you move, I strike! And if you do not move, I strike!
- Darzee the Tailorbird: [singing] Rikk-Tikki-Tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs aflame.
- Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the Mongoose: What price for a cobra's egg?
- [nudges the egg forward]
- Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the Mongoose: For a young cobra?
- [Nagaina gasps]
- Nagaina the Cobra, Wife of Nag: Give it to me, Riki Tiki!
- [facing off with Nagaina]
- Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the Mongoose: Nag was already dead when the big man blew him up! *I* killed Nag! Come and get me, Nagaina!
- Narrator: Very few mongooses, however old and wise, care to follow a cobra into its hole. You never know when the hole may open out and give the cobra room to strike.