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THE STORY OF ADA BLACKJACK 341

her—there might be enough to take him down to Seattle to a
hospital where he could have special medical care and have a
chance to grow well and strong, as other children. So she decided
to go with the expedition.

The party was landed at Wrangel Island without difficulty. The
ship that took them returned to Nome and they were engulfed in
the silence that belongs to remote and far-off places.

The following year Mr. Stefansson sent in a ship with extra
supplies. The ice was late in breaking up that year; the ship
could not get near the island, so she returned to Nome. No
anxiety was felt for the party. They had planned from the begin-
ning to live by hunting and there was known to be game on and
near the island.

The second year the Donaldson, a power boat, was sent to
Wrangel to bring out the men of the expedition if they wanted to
return.

The ice broke early. The ship reached Wrangel without any
serious difficulties. When they arrived they found that Ada Black-
jack was the only member of the expedition alive.

Crawford, Maurer and Galle perished by some unforseen accident
on their journey to the Siberian Coast. A tipping ice cake—or the
breaking of thin ice—are possible reasons for their deaths. Trips
of the same length and difficulty are ordinarily made in the Arctic
in from ten to twenty days.

Ada told of the death of Lorne Knight. She had stayed behind
to care for him. He was too ill to undertake the journey even if
it had been the plan to leave the island unoccupied.

She nursed him to the best of her ability until his death the
following June.

Then she took up the work where the men had left off. She had
noticed that they all kept diaries. So she kept a diary. She wrote
down the daily happenings and her own thoughts. As a human
document, her journal is almost without parallel.

Early in the Fall Ada left Nome for Seattle. She had not given
up her idea of taking Bennett to a hospital to make him well, and
her coming caused a good deal of interest among the newspapers
and people who had followed her story in the papers.

In appearance she is a tiny creature, weighing under a hundred
pounds. She has a slim delicate body and a well-poised head with