stefansson-wrangel-09-25-008-017

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diary nor a suggestion that he himself or anyone else was to blame. There
are no heroics, no vain regrets. He was confined to the house by the
gradually increasing illness and wrote longer entries because there was more
leisure. In a book sometime we shall be able to quote them in full. It is
a thrilling story only if one reads the heroism between the lines. His was
that type of courage which never feels the need of decking itself with
becoming modesty. It was not the attitude of the martyr before a sacrifice
or of the hero giving his life for a cause. It was rather the light-hearted
seriousness of the Tommy going into battle.

Knight died on June 22nd, a little before the most
powerful ship could have left Nome for Wrangell Island in even the most
favorable season.

When it came to the test, the courage of Ada Blackjack
seems to have been the type of Knight's own. She had been brought up in a
city. Although of Eskimo blood, she knew little more about the life of a
hunter than might be the case with a Frenchwoman. But she had always worked
with her hands and was full of resource and initiative. When Knight could
not tend the traps she taught herself to do that, learning through failure
how to succeed another time. First she caught foxes and later she shot birds.

Unfortunately but inevitably, she had the superstitions
of her people. She was afraid of the evil spirits which she supposed were
causing Knight's illness and which might do her harm. This made her trial
severe and her credit greater for having stuck it out. But a more handi-
capping superstition was her Eskimo fear of polar bears which has come down
since the days before firearms when a bear had to be killed at close quarters
sometimes with bow and arrow but more frequently with spear. Under those
conditions polar bears were dangerous. But for a present-day man or woman