stefansson-wrangel-09-32-086v

372 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

newspapers or this second contradictory story, will see that both
disagree with the records no less than each of his versions dis-
agrees with his other version. That will also become sufficiently
clear to the reader who follows through the rest of this book. Here
we will consider only one point that bears on the history of the
manuscripts. We quote first a paragraph from the above news-
paper statement: “Knight’s diary ceased March 21, 1923, the last
entry being in a firm hand and with no suggestion of death. Be-
yond this place, however, several pages were torn from the book.
The woman had started her diary about two weeks before Knight’s
stopped.”

With regard to this we want to establish, first, that Mr. Noice
was not misquoted by the reporter, for that sometimes happens.
That this was not the case is shown by the fact that Mr. Noice
himself extracted this clipping from the New York World and
mailed it to Mr. J. I. Knight with the following letter:

“MY DEAR MR. KNIGHT:

I thought you might be interested in the enclosed clipping which
shows that I have a different viewpoint of the Wrangel Island
story, as that first published I obtained from the Eskimo woman.

It is thru Mrs. Noice's efforts that the second story was brought
to light, and it is thru her desire to give the boys a square deal,
which she felt I had not done, that these discoveries were made.
It caused her much suffering until these facts were made known.

In this new light I see what a heroic character your son was.

Yours sincerely,

(Signed) HAROLD NOICE.”

Having established that Mr. Noice was not misquoted by the
World, we emphasize next that he clearly intimates that it was
Ada Blackjack who removed and either destroyed or now pos-
sesses the ten pages of Lorne Knight’s diary that are still missing.
In that connection we have carefully questioned over again the
people to whom Mr. Noice had earlier told his three varying stories
about the diary.¹² Mr. Carl Lomen is reasonably certain that
when he examined Lorne Knight’s diary as shown him by Mr.

¹² This refers in part to material removed from this book as not needed,
after we received his signed retraction.