Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
"There I set to work. In Tummasook's copper kettle I mixed three
quarts of wheat flour with five of molasses, and to this I added of
water twenty quarts. Then I placed the kettle near the lamp, that
it might sour in the warmth and grow strong. Moosu understood, and
said my wisdom passed understanding and was greater than Solomon's,
who he had heard was a wise man of old time. The kerosene can I
set over the lamp, and to its nose I affixed a snout, and into the
snout the bone that was like a gooseneck. I sent Moosu without to
pound ice, while I connected the barrel of his gun with the
gooseneck, and midway on the barrel I piled the ice he had pounded.
And at the far end of the gun-barrel, beyond the pan of ice, I
placed a small iron pot. When the brew was strong enough (and it
was two days ere it could stand on its own legs), I filled the
kerosene can with it, and lighted the wicks I had braided.
"Now that all was ready, I spoke to Moosu. 'Go forth,' I said, 'to
the chief men of the village, and give them greeting, and bid them
come into my igloo and sleep the night away with me and the gods.'
"The brew was singing merrily when they began shoving aside the
skin flap and crawling in, and I was heaping cracked ice on the
gun-barrel. Out of the priming hole at the far end, drip, drip,
drip into the iron pot fell the liquor--HOOCH, you know. But
they'd never seen the like, and giggled nervously when I made
harangue about its virtues. As I talked I noted the jealousy in
the shaman's eye, so when I had done, I placed him side by side
with Tummasook and the woman Ipsukuk. Then I gave them to drink,
and their eyes watered and their stomachs warmed, till from being
afraid they reached greedily for more; and when I had them well
started, I turned to the others. Tummasook made a brag about how
he had once killed a polar bear, and in the vigour of his pantomime
nearly slew his mother's brother. But nobody heeded. The woman
Ipsukuk fell to weeping for a son lost long years agone in the ice,
and the shaman made incantation and prophecy. So it went, and
before morning they were all on the floor, sleeping soundly with
the gods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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