"But where could they get stills? I should think it was as easy to catch a trader selling stills as selling whisky."
"They're home-made stills," the whaler explained. "There ain't much to the apparatus. It is just a five-gallon coal-oil tin, an old gun-barrel an' a wooden tub. The liquor they make tastes like chain lightnin', and makes up in strength what it hasn't got in flavor.
"But what I think wonderful is this. When the Coast Guard—it was the Revenue Cutter Service then—began its patrol of the Arctic, one of the first things it did was to show the Eskimo the result of their drunken bouts. Takin' whisky to native tribes an' then teachin' 'em to let it alone is the white man's long suit.
"But the main difference between the Eskimo an' the rest of 'em, is that these tribes listened. They asked a pile o' questions an' at last agreed that the reasons given were good an' the habit was bad. Off their own bat they broke up all the stills on the coast, an' months after the clean-up a native told me that he had told his friends inland what Bertholf had said, an' that all the stills there had been destroyed, too. There's liquor enough in the south, but by the Eskimo's own choosin' there isn't a blind tiger to-day between Cape Prince of Wales, Point Barrow and Mackenzie Bay."
In consequence of this self-control on the part of the natives, the young United States Commissioner found very little strain on his judicial powers. One of the things that did trouble him was the constant request of the natives to get married. The problem seemed so difficult that he asked advice from the first lieutenant, who, many years before, had been Commissioner on a similar assignment to that of Eric.
"I don't like marrying these natives, sir," he said, "because, so far as I can make out, they haven't any idea of the legal end of it. I've been talking to Ahyatlogok, a bridegroom, and he really doesn't intend to do anything more than try out the bride for a season, Eskimo fashion, to see if he likes her. And if he doesn't and they both want to separate, if I've married them, they can't."
"Ahyatlogok's not rich enough to take that long trip to Nome to get a divorce. It's a year's journey, nearly. And unless he does, next time the Bear comes up he'll be a criminal. And yet he'll have done just what his father did before him and nearly all his neighbors are doing."
"Mr. Swift," the senior officer answered, with a slight twinkle in his eye, "do you tie a granny knot in a reef-point?"
"No, sir, never!" exclaimed Eric in surprise.