58 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



After the ships were gone, the Herschel Island com- 

 munity continued shrinking. There is a beautiful har- 

 bor, so it is the logical wintering pla*ce for ships. This 

 year no ships were going to winter and there was no 

 reason for any white men to stay there except one or two 

 policemen to keep the barracks. Inspector Howard had 

 the notion himself that Macpherson, up in the spruce 

 forest, would be a pleasanter wintering place than wind- 

 swept Herschel Island. The other policemen encouraged 

 him in this view on various ostensible grounds but, as 

 they told me, really because of the well-known principle 

 that when the cat fo away the mice may play. Inspector 

 Howard was called by his friends a good disciplinarian 

 and by the rest a martinet. There was covert rejoicing 

 in police quarters when he sailed away, leaving the island 

 for the winter in charge of Sergeant Fitzgerald. 



Apart from the police and myself, there were only two 

 white men on the island. One was a picturesque charac- 

 ter called Chris Stein, whom I judged from his name to 

 be a German. I found later that his real name was Sten 

 and that he was a Norwegian, a seafaring man who had 

 had adventures in many seas and could relate them so that 

 they lost no interest in the telling. Aboard ship he had 

 held nearly every position from cook to mate, and by his 

 own telling he had been in the navies of various countries, 

 as well as in the merchant marine and in whalers. He 

 was married to a native woman, whose two brothers, 

 Kunak and Kakotok, were among the wealthiest of Es- 

 kimos. Some years before, these brothers in partnership 

 with two others, Ilavinirk (called by the whalers Ander- 

 son) and Tulugak, had purchased from a whaling captain 

 the schooner Penelope, which had once upon a time been 

 one of the finest pleasure yachts on the Pacific Coast. 



