“Will the white men give me the little stone for this?” he asked. With wonder in his heart Harry waited a moment, not to seem to yield too easily. Then he passed over the bit of jade and placed his hand on the umiak. The bargain was completed.
Thus it is with the Innuit. He is a shrewd trader, yet, sometimes, for no explainable reason, will give his all for a bauble, and in this he is perhaps not so very different from white men, after all. This peculiar trade left the boys with much merchandise still on their hands, and with this they bought trade goods and supplies for the furtherance of their journey. They sold their dogs and sled, and prepared for a boat trip to Bering Straits, where they might find ships. Failing in this, they planned to work south along the coast. Under no conditions would they go north. They had had enough of that.
About this time they took an inventory of their possessions. They had a tent, umiak, rifles, and ammunition, flour, sugar, salt, matches, and clothes rather the worse for wear, but new muckalucks. They had a few battered kitchen utensils, sufficient for rough camp housekeeping, a little dried fish, and some caribou meat, but not much. They had also vigorous health, courage, and a great desire to get home, and they planned to make a start soon, but while they planned things happened.
As may be imagined, among such a horde of barbarians from strange villages all was not law and order. At first the excitement of trading and the novelty of the situation kept everybody busy, but by and by barter got to be an old story. Contests and games became prevalent, trials of strength in wrestling, shooting-matches, blanket-tossing, in which if no one volunteered to be tossed they went out and caught some one, who was tossed whether he needed it or not. Barbarians are like children, and those who lost at the games were not always good-natured. But the sport of all others at this meet seemed to be football. Not the Rugby game, but a sort of go-as-you-please match, in which a few started, then newcomers joined the weaker side, till hundreds swept back and forth across the tundra, sometimes for many hours. There were no rules to this game; it was simply get the ball back any way you could, and some of these ways proved to be rough indeed. Yet all these things caused only minor fracases and individual discontent. There was another matter which threatened to make things more serious, and in fact did so. That was the making of “hootch.”
If you mix flour and water and let it ferment, then distill the mixture by means of a rude apparatus, the result is “hootch.” Probably the coast natives learned this method from some renegade white man; then the business spread. It came to the sandspit that summer, and, as a result, old single-barreled shotguns were in great demand. If you take one of these and put the butt of the barrel in a good hot fire, the block becomes unbrazed from the breech and the barrel is a tube. It serves as the worm of a primitive still. Many of these machines were set up in the topeks on the sandspit, and the resultant hilarity became noticeable long before the boys discovered its cause. They foresaw trouble, but they could do nothing to prevent it. They did remonstrate with old Panik, the head man of the tribe with which they had come down river, and toward whom they had very friendly feelings. Indeed, since the kindness of the village to the boys had been in part repaid by their help in saving the youngsters from the river ice, there had been strong bonds of brotherhood between them all.
Panik had become infected with the desire to make the new drink, and had paid many skins to a Chuckchis for the old gun. He built a small fire at his topek door, and while Harry argued with him he thrust the butt of the barrel into it with a cheerful grin.
“You shall drink with me,” he said. “The new drink is very good.” And then there was an explosion, and Panik sank to the ground without a cry. The old gun was loaded, and the heat of the fire had discharged it. The chief was dead, and Harry and Joe were much pained and horrified by the accident.
They helped bury him with much ceremony and genuine sorrow, but the matter did not end here. The Indian is more vindictive than the Eskimo, and the relatives of the old chief took up the matter. They blamed the Chuckchis who had sold the gun, even intimated that he had loaded it purposely, and they demanded either his life in return, or the payment of a large amount of goods. The Chuckchis, as I have said before, are a truculent and warlike people, and this one resolutely and scornfully refused reparation. Then there was a fight, and the Chuckchis killed one of Panik’s relatives with his own hand.
The feud thus begun spread rapidly, the hootch adding fuel to the flames, and in twenty-four hours the camp was a pandemonium. All took sides, though few knew just why, or with whom, and a wild free fight ensued. Eskimos, maddened with the vile liquor, ran amuck, killing whatever came within reach, until they were themselves killed, and life was nowhere safe for a moment.
It was of no use for the boys to interfere, and they soon saw that their only safety lay in flight. This agreed with their plans to get away as soon as possible, and they were fortunate in having a boat and sufficient outfit. Accordingly they quietly loaded the umiak, bade good-by to such of the villagers as were sober and they could reach without danger, and were about to embark when the Point Hope man who had sold them the umiak appeared. He was tipsy, like most everybody else, and in quarrelsome mood. He laid his hand on the umiak and demanded it back, saying that he was not satisfied with the terms of the trade. It was of no use to reason with him; he was not in a condition to understand things. Behind him came other Eskimos, also armed and equally tipsy, and matters looked decidedly unpleasant. It seemed as if they would have to fight to retain their property.