stefansson-wrangel-09-32-072v

344 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

platform above her tent. This was a laborious task. She dragged
the boards and placed them on four uprights, nailed the planks
securely. It was cold and she had to work “without mittens”.

She was not very strong, or skilled at such work, but it was
something that had to be done, so somehow she managed to do it.

There never seemed to be any negative sense in Ada. Certain
things must be done, therefore, she did them. She made a skin
boat to hunt walrus when they came in near the Island. Each
problem in living that presented itself, she mastered somehow, the
mistakes she made one time, she didn't make a second time.

The bears were her enemies in reality, as well as imagination—
for the first seal that she killed was eaten by a bear.

This was almost a tragedy, for her meat supply was very low
and she knew she must have fresh meat to keep from having
scurvy.

One day not long after the death of Knight she shot a seal
on the ice. She crept up as near as she could, wriggling up cau-
tiously on her stomach, pretending she was another seal, for a
seal is very suspicious of every moving thing, and will slip quickly
into the water and out of sight in an instant.

When she was near enough she shot it in the head. It died
instantly without moving, so that it did not slide forward into the
water.

She was very happy, for to an Eskimo, a seal means everything
—oil for lamps, lean and fat meat for food, and skin for clothing.

As she was engaged in cutting up the seal, she looked up and
saw in the distance a moving yellow speck on the ice. It was a
polar bear coming toward her. Frightened she ran to her tent, and
from a safe distance watched the bear tear to pieces the seal she
had shot, and drag away her food—“But, I am glad it is not me
polar bear eats.”

Once she said, “I do not write about bear in my ‘dary’ for if I
die and someone reads my writings and my mother knows about
it, she will always believe that I am eaten by polar bear, and in
his stomach—no matter how I die, she will think polar bear eats
me.”

In Seattle she saw many strange things. Elevators frightened her
at first, but she overcame that fear. The first days at a hotel she