We resumed our reading and troubled our- 

 selves no further about the matter ; but several 

 times afterward that evening, and once in the 

 night, I fancied that I heard the shouting. 



The next morning, before school time, while 

 yet it was dark, Esanetuk and her little sister, 

 Poona, came to our door, looking very cold and 

 miserable. They had been crying, and Esanetuk 

 had a livid bruise on the side of her face. We 

 took them in and gave them breakfast. Tatta- 

 rat also came to the schoolhouse at about the 

 same time, looking equally woebegone. 



At first, both he and Esanetuk were reluctant 

 to tell us why they had come so early and in 

 such plight. But after they were warmed and 

 fed, the older girl told my wife that her mother 

 had beaten them and turned them out of the 

 house early in the evening ; and that they had 

 been out-of-doors all night. "Tatters" also told 

 me much the same story. 



When we asked them what they had done and 

 why their parents had beaten them, they at first 

 made no answer, and we thought they had been 

 doing wrong. At length, Tatters muttered 

 something about "gun- water" — using two na- 

 tive words, signifying a gun and water. Nothing 

 more was said ; but when the other pupils came 

 to school, they were all somewhat excited and 

 talked a great deal about gun-water. I took 

 Kannakut aside and asked him what had hap- 

 pened at Esanetuk's house. 



He replied that Hoonakia was there, and that 



she was "cooking gun- water; " that as many as 

 fifteen other natives had gone to the house the 

 night before to taste it ; and that the uproar we 

 had heard came from the people at the house, 

 who had danced, sung, shouted and fought dur- 

 ing the greater part of the night. 



Hoonakia was a disreputable native woman 

 from Cape Prince of Wales, or else Point Hope, 

 on the mainland of Alaska. Three weeks before 

 a whaler, in passing down from the Arctic, had 

 set her ashore on St. Lawrence Island. 



A foreboding of evil fell on us, and after 

 school was dismissed that afternoon, my wife 

 and I went home wath Esanetuk — ostensibly to 

 call. 



At the entrance of the igloo we met Keevalik 

 and Nu.smoa, two young hunters, coming forth 

 boisterously ; and above the other odors of the 

 low passageway, I only too certainly detected 

 the sickish smell of alcohol. If I had felt any 

 doubt, however, it would have been quickly dis- 

 pelled when we pushed aside the bearskin cur- 

 tain. 



Esanetuk's father, mother and five or six other 

 natives lay on the floor drunk. Two women, 

 who were nodding sleepily, squatted on the floor 

 in the far corner. But what most interested us 

 was the woman who sat beside tlie large, whale- 

 fat cooking-lamp in the middle of the igloo and 

 tended the flame. This woman was Hoonakia. 

 Suspended over the lamp was a large, sheet-iron 

 can, the contents of which were boiling and 



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