stefansson-wrangel-09-32-042r

THE SECOND WINTER AND THE TRAGIC END 287

Inglis Fletcher. We could devise a composite narrative
from those three sources and place it here, but then the
reader might omit the documents themselves. The diary
we do not publish for it is disjointed and in part illegible
because of the bad pencil and paper rather than through
Ada’s difficult handwriting and peculiar spelling. But
her statement to Mr. Jordan and her talks with Mrs.
Fletcher are straightforward. They give a clearer pic-
ture of the terrible situation on Wrangel Island and
throw into higher relief the characters of Knight and
Ada herself than could any ordinary paraphrase.
Because we want you to read those documents in Ap-
pendix II, we say no more here.

It lessens a little the tragedy of Lorne Knight’s
story that during a month or two he did not consider that
there was danger to himself, and that when he realized
the danger he took it philosophically. Neither is
there indication that he ever doubted the safety
of his three comrades. He wrote about what they would
do “when (not “if”) they get to Nome” In all he wrote
and in all he and Ada Blackjack said to each other about
Crawford’s party the word was when and never if. Ada
Blackjack’s first question when the supply ship Donald-
son arrived was as to why Crawford, Galle and Maurer
were not in the party (see her own story in the appen-
dix). That they should have been lost on the way to
Siberia was and is incomprehensible to her. In Seattle
in January, 1924, she first asked me if I did not think
they were still safe in Siberia. A day or two later she
gave it as her emphatic opinion that they were now
prisoners in Siberia or else that they were murdered
after landing. There is, of course, no chance of either.
For one thing, the Russian Siberians, both white and