Out of the Triangle: A Story of the Far East

by Mary E. Bamford

"To-morrow will be another day," he said. "Why should anybody learn for to-morrow?"

But the mother of the two lads stretched out her hand, and took the paper, and looked at the straggling marks. The fat baby, that she carried in the hood of her reindeer suit, crowed over her shoulder at the piece of paper, and Anvik forgot to be angry. He put his pencil in his mother's hand. She looked curiously at the strange new thing.

"You make A, too, mother," urged the boy; and, putting his hand on his mother's, he tried to show her how to make the strange marks.

His mother did little more than touch the paper with the pencil. She smiled at the tiny dark line she had made, and gave back the pencil and paper to the boy. She was proud of him, proud that the strange white man should have thought her boy good enough to give him such queer things. Anvik saw her pride, and felt comforted.

"To-morrow will be another day," murmured Tanana from his lounging place. "The teacher is wrong. He makes that loud sound when school begins. The wise man says the teacher must not make that sound any more, for it will prevent our people from catching foxes and seals."

"It is the school-bell," answered Anvik, knowing that the Eskimo sorcerer had gone to the teacher but a few days previous, to prophesy evil concerning the ringing of the bell. "The foxes and the seals care not for it. Go to school with me, Tanana, to-morrow. The teacher wants you."

Tanana did not answer. He drew a bottle from out of his skin suit and drank. Anvik looked at his mother. The odor of the liquor spread through the small round house. Anvik had not noticed the odor when he came in, being then too excited over his prize to have room in his head for any other idea. But now he felt a great sadness of soul. Tanana and their father were both beginning to learn to drink. The sailors who came to the shore had liquor with them sometimes, and traded it to the natives.

The teacher at school had told the boys never to touch the sailors' liquor. The teacher said it would steal the boys' souls. Anvik did not understand that very well, but he knew liquor made Tanana and their father cross and lazy, and the laziness kept them poor, and the mother was sad.

Anvik lay long awake that night, on the raised platform of snow in the igloo, and thought.

"My teacher said he heard that at one Eskimo village a canoe came with whisky and the Eskimos pounded on a drum all night, and shouted," thought the lad. "When the morning came, the people were ashamed to look in the face of their teacher. My teacher said I must pray the dear Lord Christ to save Tanana and my father from drinking."