he hears or smells a tiger. Then the deer can leap at
once and get away, before the tiger can leap. Or it may happen that
the deer is trying to escape from a tiger and has run to within
twenty yards of the tiger, when he finds out his mistake. Then the
deer can turn _at once_ and leap sideways to get out of the tiger's
reach. The deer is so quick that he can turn aside without stopping,
and keep on running.

Then after that, once he has turned away from the tiger, the tiger can
never catch him. For the deer can run ever so much faster than the
tiger.

In fact, the deer or the antelope is the fastest animal in the world,
except one other. About that other animal I shall tell you some
wonderful things in the next book. But among all animals I have told
you about in this book the deer is the fastest.

"But how do people know that the deer can run faster than other
animals?" you may ask. "Has anyone had a race between different
animals?"

Yes, some people did that in England a few years ago. They took the
fastest racehorse in the country, and ran a race between him and the
fastest greyhound; and the greyhound beat the horse in the race. Then
they took that greyhound, and ran a race between him and an English
deer; and the deer beat the greyhound in the race. So, you see, the
deer was faster than the greyhound, and the greyhound was faster than
the horse! So the deer was the fastest of the three.

And the deer that lives in the jungle is even faster than the English
deer. Why? Because the English deer lives in peaceful glades and
forests, and has no other animal trying to catch and eat him; so he
does not try to be as fast as he could be. But the deer that lives in
the jungle has to try very hard all the time to be as fast as he can
be, or else he would be eaten by the tiger! And, as you must know, _we
can do the best in anything when we try the hardest_.

So, all kinds of wild deer in the jungle have been trying their
hardest to run as fast as they can. And as their fathers and
grandfathers have been trying to do that, the wild deer to-day have
become the fastest runners among all the animals I have told you
about.

CHAPTER XI

The Camel

The _camel_ has very little to do with the kind of jungle I have been
telling you about; but he has much to do with the _desert_. A desert
is another kind of wild place. As I told you before, jungle means any
wild place; but usually, of course, there are lots of trees