"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." And Anvik prayed in the dark igloo.
The next day came, and Anvik went again to school, but Tanana and the father went off to look at the ice-traps wherein Eskimos catch any stray wolves or foxes.
When Anvik came back at night to the igloo, he met his father and Tanana rejoicing over a bear cub that they had killed.

They were bringing it home with them, and were laughing, and shouting, and singing, not so much from joy as from drinking together from the bottle that Tanana had procured.
"We have a bear cub, a bear cub!" shouted Tanana in maudlin tones to his brother.

"See how strong the hot water we drink makes us! We come home with a bear cub! Hot water, let us drink hot water!" Now by "hot water" Tanana meant of course the liquor in his bottle, and when Anvik saw the young bear and the condition his father and brother were in, the lad immediately became very anxious, for the Eskimos are usually very careful not to kill a young bear without having first killed its mother.

It is considered a very rash thing to kill the cub first, and when men who are pressed by hunger do it, they are obliged to exercise the strictest precaution lest they should be attacked by the mother-bear, for she will surely follow on the track of the men.
So the Eskimos usually go in a straight line for about five or six miles, and then suddenly turn off at a right angle, so that the mother-bear, as she presses eagerly forward, may overrun the hunters' track and lose her way.