stefansson-wrangel-09-32-065v

332 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

look after his camera and rifle, be sure and keep them dry. I
don’t know how many times he told me to be sure and care for
his camera and rifle.

About the day before he died I knew that he couldn’t last much
longer. He was unconscious and I was standing looking down at
him and the tears were in my eyes, for I thought he was going
to die. He looked up at me and said, “What is the matter, Ada?”
And I told him that I thought he was going to leave me. I just
couldn’t help but cry for I knew he wouldn’t last until the boat
got there and then I would be all alone. He told me to try and
get along some way until the boat arrived.

He died June 22, 1923. I found him dead the next morning
after he saw me crying. I don’t know what time he died but
some time in the night. After he died I wrote a letter to Mr.
Stefansson and told him what day, month and the cause of Mr.
Knight’s death, because I thought something might happen to
me, then they wouldn’t know what happened to him, because a
wild animal or something might get me before the boat arrived.
I also wrote a letter to Mr. Galle who I thought was in Nome,
Alaska. I left the letters in the typewriter so if I was not there
when the boat arrived they would find the letters and know of our
deaths. I left Mr. Knight in the tent, for I could not bury him,
and I moved into another one that we had used mostly for
storing things in.

Three days after Mr. Knight died I got a seal, and about a
week afterwards I got another seal. I shot those with Knight’s rifle.
So one day I went out again. It was the Fourth of July (I made
a calendar out of typewriting paper cut into small pieces—I had
one for 1922 but I had to make my own 1923 calendar which I
still have in my trunk). When I went to get my third seal I was
crawling and crawling along on my stomach to get up close enough
to shoot it and I was just ready to aim when it moved so that a
large ice cake extended in front or between me and the seal. So
I was moving around to get a better aim, and I had my finger on
the hammer, and in moving I must have pulled it down and
bang! went the gun and down went the seal into the water and
I didn’t get any meat. I thought, well, I had my Fourth of July
celebration anyway.

The beach was only a few yards from the back of my tent. The