stefansson-wrangel-09-32-084v

368 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

I, and some other papers. At the same time Mr. A. J. T. Taylor
received through the mail in Toronto some stray papers and what
purported to be the entire diary and notes given to Mr. Noice
by Ada Blackjack at Wrangel Island and Nome. There were
now missing so far as we knew, only pages 33-42 from Volume II
of Knight’s diary.

For the time being we could not understand why ten pages of
Volume II had not been, returned with the others. But this re-
ceived at least a tentative explanation from Mr. Noice when he
published in the New York World and other papers both in America
and Europe the statement which I have referred to above as the
first contradiction of the original Harold Noice story of Wrangel
Island. We take it verbatim from the New York World for Feb-
ruary 11,1924.⁷

SPURNED ESKIMO WOMAN IS BLAMED FOR ARCTIC
DEATH

Wrangel Island Explorers Refused Proposal of Marriage,
Rescuer Noice Discloses Here

when three left camp, knight died of hunger

Though Man’s Body was Wasted by Starvation, Ada Blackjack
was Healthy

Out of the Arctic last summer came a romantic story of three
white men presumably lost on a dash across 100 miles of ice from
Wrangel Island to Siberia, of a fourth man who died on the island
and of a heroic Eskimo woman, Ada Blackjack, fifth member of
the brave little party, who was rescued after two years on the
island by a relief expedition headed by Harold Noice, adventurer
and Arctic explorer.

Yesterday, in a cozy room at the Villa Richard, Fort Lee, N. J.,
Mr. Noice told a group of friends a far different story. Ada
Blackjack, he said, was not the heroine he at first believed her to
be. Instead, he explained, she played a mean role in a grim
tragedy she could have averted.

Earlier stories, in which Mr. Noice himself paid tribute to the

⁷Some of the minor errors are pointed out by footnotes, but the rebuttal
follows the quotation.