stefansson-wrangel-09-32-065r

THE STORY OF ADA BLACKJACK 331

Around in February when he first got sick Knight gave me his
Bible which belonged to his grandfather.

Along in June, about the first week, I took a walk to the west of
our camp and when I was coming back across the harbor I noticed
some seagulls along the beach and I wondered what they had. I
thought perhaps it was some walrus meat or something like that.
But when I got there I found they were building a nest and I
found one egg. I tried to kill some of them but couldn't, so
decided not to waste any more time. I had one egg for the night
anyway. While on the rest of my way home across the lake, some
white geese flew over my head. I took a shot at them and they
went on for about one hundred feet, then one of them dropped and
I sure was glad. So when I got home I called to Knight, “Look
what I got." He opened his eyes and said, “What is that, a sea-
gull?" I said, “No, it is a white goose and one seagull egg." He
wanted to know if the egg was fresh and I told him it was warm
when I found it. So I fried it for him but first I had to break it
into a cup to show him it was fresh. I cooked the wild goose until
the meat fell away from the bone.⁴

About three days afterwards I went back to the place where I
had found the egg and found nine more in the same nest. Knight
ate those eggs while he was living because he couldn't eat meat
on account of his throat being so sore. He was so weak that I had
to hold his head to give him a drink of water. I made a canvas bag
and filled this bag with hot sand to keep his feet warm. Every
morning and night for two months I heated this sand and put
it to his feet.

About three or four weeks before he died I had to make a bag
from oatmeal sacks and filled it with cotton to put under his
back because he said it was so very sore. He told me that if
anything happened to him, if he was to die, to put his diary and
some papers he had written in his trunk, and that I would find
the key to his trunk in his trousers' pocket. He also told me to

⁴ This is a pathetic entry. According to our views developed in treating
scurvy cases on previous expeditions (including Knight’s own case in 1917),
scurvy can be cured by fresh meat if eaten underdone or raw. Similarly, raw
eggs would have antiscorbutic value. Knight was of this opinion, yet he does
not seem to have protested against Ada’s cooking the meat and eggs. Perhaps
he did not at this stage suppose his illness was scurvy—and possibly it may
not have been.