DECEMBER WEATHER was always delightful, and it was the custom to spend Christmas in camp at Saloia, a remote Christian Santal village deep in the jungle, which survived in complete isolation. 

A day in advance I had sent off a bullock-cart laden with tents, cooking utensils, food, medicines and a few books and slipped away myself in the old Ford the following dawn to escape detection. After a dozen miles the road petered out and I left the car under a shady tree. With the help of my guide we then struck up a dry river bed on foot, the easiest mode of progression in country deeply eroded into small canyons. Even so it was rough going and when we at last reached a clearance in a large mango grove, I was told we had arrived. 
I was greeted by the head man of the village, a saintly old man, who was the founder of this Christian 'cell'.  As a young man he had visited the jungle hospital on several occasions and shown an interest in healing and Christian beliefs, begging to be given some simple medicines and dressings. He seemed intelligent and had kept up these visits - involving a walk of thirty miles - in spite of advancing years. 
As I was in fact ahead of my baggage train, he led me to a small windowless hut that stood apart from the others, in which he invited me to shelter from the afternoon sun. It was bare of furnishings but in one corner was a pile of school books on the floor, in another of pile of medicine bottles, in a third a Santali New Testament on top of a small tin box. Thus it was school, dispensary, church - and now a rest house - all in one. A charpoy (rope bed) was quickly brought for me to lie on and boiled buffalo milk in a brass vessel to drink. 

As I looked through the open doorway into the shimmering heat and white glare, it seemed the epitome of peace and solitude. Only a distant tinkle of cow bells and the pipe of a herd boy's lute broke the silence. But solitude was short-lived. The lute sounded nearer, then stopped, and the herd boy peeped at me from behind a tree. He wore a yard of village homespun with the dignity of a Roman toga. Darting off, he returned with a small army of younger and more naked children to see this strange, bleached white man. They were followed by four brown-skinned young women with scarlet flowers in their hair and water pots on their heads, who paused and gazed - wild-eyed - then passed on. 

As the tree shadows lengthened, the bullock-cart with tent and kit came lumbering in. On my suggesting a suitable camp site, the headman insisted on another where the "Doctor sahib's tent was always put". I let him have his way. 

It was Christmas Eve, and when later that evening I leaned back in deck-chair outside my tent, I watched (by way of welcome) a dozen Santal girls sing carols set to their traditional native tunes, and they danced as they sang, in keeping with biblical tradition. 

But Santali tunes grow monotonous to western ears and one of the early missionaries had apparently rebelled. To my astonishment the next carol-cum-dance was set to the tune of the English folk song 'Clementine'. 

On Christmas morning, I held a short open-air surgery outside my tent, with the head-man in attendance (anxious to pick up a few more medical hints). In the afternoon I organised some children's sports. In the small boys' bow and arrow contest, I was delighted to find an unsuspected Santal virtue - good sportsmanship. When an arrow went wide, there were roars of laughter, in which the bad marksman joined heartily. 
During these, some personal Christmas mail, with happy timing, arrived by runner. When darkness fell, the surrounding trees were lit by nature's candles, myriads of fireflies. 

So far it had been a 'Christmas that was different', but the climax was still to come. I had just finished my Crosse and Blackwell tinned Christmas pudding, and laced myself up inside my tent, when my Santal servant coughed respectfully outside. I rose and unfastened my tent flap, whereupon he announced coolly and formally; as if Father Christmas had arrived - 
"A leopard has come, Doctor Sahib ". 

Almost at once there was a confused barking of dogs and much shouting. I was in my pyjamas and no one had a gun. But he beckoned me to follow him by the moon's light to a large hut I had not previously seen. Apparently a leopard had been harassing the villagers for some time, attacking their goats and even a young child. The large hut was in fact a specially built leopard-trap, which had been successful. 

The whole population was now out, children dancing round it with mixed glee and fear, clutching parents when the leopard (which was unhurt) let out a loud roar. Great bonfires were lit to scare off its mate. Old timers squatted down to swap yarns of previous captures between volleys of spit, and an old woman showed me a claw mark on her forehead and shook her fist at it. 
My striped Austin Reed pyjamas provided the Santals with a minor rival spectacle for a time, but nothing further could be done till the morning when a rifle was brought from a neighbouring village; so I turned in. 

At dawn next day, small boys danced round with bows and arrows, pretending they themselves had killed it, and two of them - under directions from the head-man - skinned the carcass adeptly, while others brought leaf-plates and stole tasty morsels during division of the flesh for a Christmas feast. I too dined on leopard on Christmas day, in a spirit of culinary enquiry. My fanciful menu was as follows: - 

The village headman confounded me on the day of my departure with a request to dispense the Holy Sacrament. I was not ordained as a priest, but he was so disappointed at my refusal that I relented and did so, in the little hut in which I had first rested. In any case, said the head-man, it would be just this once, for when the former doctor sahib returned from his furlough, and learned of his prowess with the leopard, he would undoubtedly create him a bishop. 

If possible I was determined to keep the skin, and the problem of its preservation solved as follows. It was pressed into a large oil drum and soaked in brine, and on my return journey I stopped at Simaltala railway station, where by a stroke of luck, the Anglo-Indian stationmaster was a keen shikari (hunter). He put it on the next train to Calcutta and telegraphed a taxidermist there to collect it. 
It has been the subject of many a tale to my own children, and to my grandchildren, one of whom will inherit it. 
It would not be truthful, however, to say that it is still quite as it was, for many years ago some of my children apparently decided to practise a little surgery on it, and the leopard is now without his teeth and glass eyes.