Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 25 December 1886.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, pp. 62–3).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets, in the Civil and Military Gazette Annual, Lahore, 1936, and in Harbord, iii, 1565–71.

When reindeer get their heads free and bolt, there is no controlling them; because, you see, they pull from their horns. Santa Claus’ team had, through sheer freshness – for they had been in stable for twelve months past – shied at the Northern Lights behind Copenhagen, wheeled round through Finland, and so bolted straight across European Russia before Santa Claus could get a pull on them.

Now Hans Anderson, and one or two other writers in America and the north of Europe, had made Santa Claus the great power he was. So he kept, as a rule, to the place where he had been created and where every one knew and loved him. But those reckless reindeer had dragged him hundreds and hundreds of miles out of his course; and he puffed and blew in the sleigh all alone under the stars somewhere on the wrong side of the Ural Mountains with the noses of his team – the eight big white reindeer – pointing full across the Kirghiz Steppes.

“This is a bad business” said Santa Claus, looking at the jumbled pile of presents in the sleigh. “I must steer back to the Northern Lights.” Just then a wolf howled, and this set the deer off faster than ever, southward and eastward across the Kirghiz Steppes. “There ought to be Christmas twice a week” thought Santa Claus, “to keep these brutes in order.” The parcels were flying about like hot peas, and Santa Claus had only one hand free for the reins; so the deer did pretty much what they liked. They had eaten the green moss at the foot of the Rjica Vom and drunk the glacier water that comes from the crest of the Rjica Vom for a twelve month; and every body knows how that puts strength into cattle.