stefansson-wrangel-09-32-070v

342 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

a mass of straight blue-black hair. Her complexion is olive—fine
grained with a faint flush of red under the skin. She is distinctly
oriental in appearance and she is constantly taken for a Japanese.

Her dark brown eyes are habitually enigmatic—closed win-
dows—for she is a reserved person.

There is an effect of deep silence about her; the sort of silence
that belongs to people who are used to being alone. Yet at times
she is as gay and light-hearted as a child.

She is shy and sensitive—she watches new people with a certain
aloof distrust. She says very little to strangers, sitting quietly—
listening with her head half turned, with an oblique glance of her
eyes.

Her voice is low pitched—contralto in quality. Her English is
expressive, but she shows by the placing of words and the construc-
tion of her sentences that she still has the habit of thinking in
Eskimo rather than English.

When she attempts to talk to more than one or two people at a
time, she grows confused and returns to her usual state of vast
silences.

Her little boy Bennett, on the contrary, talks constantly, asking
innumerable questions about all the new things he sees everywhere
about him. After asking many questions, he is quite likely to
burst into some graphic description about his life in Nome, such
as, “I have a reindeer; I can ride on his back—when I want him
to go fast, I slap him with hand and he will run very fast so I
have to hold on to his horns.”

Ada often says—“Bennett, why do you ask so many questions?
I never ask questions. Even when I was a little girl, my mother
said ‘Ada never asked questions’.”

When she was left alone on the Island with Lorne Knight, she
realized she must hunt for two as he was almost helpless. They
were short of meat, and that was very much needed if Knight was
to get well, but big game was scarce. Ducks began to appear over
the Island, and Ada took a gun and tried to kill an eiderduck. Her
shots went wild and she was alarmed at the result. “I thought to
myself, I must not waste ammunition—I must learn to shoot.” She
set up a target for practice. The gun was heavy and the recoil
bruised her shoulder. She made a gun rest and learned to shoot
so she no longer felt the kick of the gun. Practice every day made