Marooned on Wrangel Island

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 97, 19 January 1924, Page 13

Marooned on Wrangel Island

Moving Story of Ada Blackjack

FIVE Arctic Robinson Crusoes, four white men and an Eskimo woman, who were marooned on an island north of Alaska, are furnishing the latest story, and moral, of the long and tragic history of polar adventure. The' Eskimo woman, Ada Blackjack, was the only member of the party found alive when a rescuing expedition reached the island this fall, and it is largely her record of the affair that is now being published through The North American Newspaper Alliance, lhe writer, Harold Ncice, was the leader of the rescue expedition, which found one dead man and one almost demented Eskimo woman in the tents where the party of young adventurers had, almost hilariously, set out to “colonize” the island two years before. The other three men of the party are believed to have perished in a daring attempt to reach Siberia, through the mid-winter cold, more than a year ago. With the four men recently lost, and the eleven who succumbed on a previous expedition, this corner of the world now has fifteen dead explorers to its credit. It is called “The Death Tap of the Arctic, by Burt M. McConnell, ‘ a member of the former expedition, who explains that the attempt to colonize the island was made by the explorer Stefansson, with the idea that it eventually “would become a valuable dirigible and airplane base for aircraft flying from England into China and Japan, over the North Pole.” Japan was thought to covet this base. The adventure on which these four young men and one young Eskimo woman set out, observes Mr. Noice, offered both the large stakes and perilous adventure of high romance.

The departure from Nome was accompanied by a good deal of mystery, records Mr. Noice, for “the wise heads of Nome either refused to believe them when they announced their destination of Wrangel Island, or were scentical of their chances for success.” The boys’ real purpose, of course, was “to occupy Wrangel Island in the name of King George and run up a British Flag,” but “they said they were going to make their fortunes trapping,” even though Nome surmised that “no one of them had ever set a trap in his life.” For the next two years, they were pretty well forgotten. Then the relieving expedition, financed by Mr. Stefansson and headed by Mr. Noice, approached the island. At length, records the writer: — A low cliff loomed on the starboard side —the cliff which formed the northern boundary of Rogers Harbour. Here, we had been told, we would find the boys. But, perceiving no signs of human habitation, we concluded that the party had not been landed there. It was after we had sailed away again that we discovered what was to prove the forerunner of tragedy. Ten miles farther on wo came on an abandoned camp and there found a bottle, half-buried in mud, containing a claim to ownership of Wrangel Island in the name of King George, and signed by the four men of the party. This proclamation was dated September 16, 1921. There was nothing to give a single clue toward solving the mystery of what had befallen the party since that date.

Then on again, through the fog, until, in the early morning of August 20, as our boat was creeping along the shore, a shout went up from Eskimos. They were pointing to a figure, dimly visible on the beach. I rang down full speed astern, to stop the “Donaldson,” then put off in a umiak (a walrus-hide boat).with a crew of natives.

• As we drew near the island, 1 saw the vague form was that of a woman. She came wading through the shallow water to meet us. I knew at once that it was Ada Blackjack. Her face had the look of a hunter. When I shook her hand I knew, without any telling, that she had had a hard time. It was the hand of a fighter. She was dressed in furs, a snow shirt over her reindeer parka. Slung over her shoulder was a pair of binoculars. As she pushed back the wolfskin fringe of her reindeer hood, I saw her eyes — incredulous, startled, almost dazed.

Her first question confirmed my worst fears. “Where is Crawford and Galle and Maurer?” she asked in slightly broken English. And when I told her that I had just arrived from Nome and expected to find them all on Wrangel Island, she choked back a sob and said: “There is nobody here but me. lam all alone. Knight, he died on June 22. I want to go back to my mother.” With that, she swooned and tottered forward. As I caught her in my arms, she commenced to sob like a little girl. When I had brought her aboard the “Donaldson” and given her a cup of coffee, she revived and was able to eat some breakfast. Taking only Ada, I paddled to the beach in one of the umiaks. It was a dismal day. The fog, a ghostly shroud, hung over the sordid disarray of broken boxes, and all but hid the two flimsy tents. Ada pointed to the larger of them. “Knight—he dead man now —him stay inside over there. Better we go first to my tent.” And sho led the way up the gravelled beach to her own little home.

Besides the entrance was a small canvas boat, crudely built but apparently seaworthy; as we paused to examine it, Ada pointed with pride to her handiwork. “After Knight die and birds and seal come I work hard to make a little boat so can get anything I shoot in the water. But only use it maybe two times when wind blow it away out to sea while I sleep. Then

I cry all day and next day and next day, then I say to myself no use to cry any more and then I make this one, and now tie it up after every time I use it.” Ada’s tent was .torn; it hung from a crude framework of driftwood which she had erected after Knight died. In front of the entrance was a little cupboard made ‘of boxes, where she kept her ammunition and field-glasses. I followed her in. To the left of the door stood an old stove, rusty and fire-eaten, a little pile of firewood beside it. She had made that stove herself, out of empty kerosene tins. A battered tea-kettle sat on top of a small box —a box containing all the food she had —a little hard bread, a few pieces of dried meat; that was all. Against the rear wall of the tent she had built a sleeping-platform of driftwood and empty crates, covered with reindeer skins. Two guns, one a twelve-gauge shotgun, the other a thirty-forty rifle, hung suspended from a rack over her head. It was cold in the little ten , and through tho rents in the canvas, mist and fog drifted in. Such was the habitation in which this girl had slept, eaten, hoped and waited—praying that help would come. x She busied herself in lighting a fire while I sat down on a box and looked about me. “I sorry I can’t give you any good thing to eat, but I make a. little tea, she said. It wasn’t long before the fire was burning brightly and the tent warm. Suddenly, and to my intense surprise, a grey cat slid out from its hidingplace behind a box and stepped sedately over to Ada, who grabbed it up in her arms, caressing it, talking to it. Vic —for that was its name kad een Ada’s only companion since Knight’s death, and she told me she be leve she tvould have gone insane if she hadn’t' Vic to talk to. Then, as though she were someone newly awakened from a nightmare, she began, in a slightly dazed fashion, to tell me of her life on the island, how she had cried when the boys started for Siberia, leaving her to nurse Knight. Then the Tong weary days of illness, when she, as well as Knight, had been so weakened by scurvy that sometimes she had been unable to go to her traps, and was barely able to chop wood and nurse her sick companion. Her voice choked as she told mo how glad she was when spring came. “My, I was so glad, I just sit down and cry when I see the first little snow buntings come from the south in the spring—but Knight he—was pretty sick th en — an( i a ll he could eat was sometimes a little soup —and by and by I—l could not save his life—no matter how hard I try —he die and then me and Vic we move over here in this place.” » When I asked her about Crawford, Maurer and Galle, she only shook her head, and said: “I don’t know —much—how they went away. When they was loading up the sled I was inside the tent, crying, and then after they go, it blow wind with plenty snow drifting, and I think they get lost, or may be break through thin ice, but every time before I go to sleep I read my Bible and then I pray to the Lord Jesus to make them come back safe, and then when I see your ship I so glad, and I think you have those with you, and they are not lost, but now I guess they are gone all right, and I won’t see them any more.” Noice, at length, went over to the other tent, the one where Lome Knight still lay, lifted the flap and went inside. Ada followed, he writes, and —• We made our way through the litter of discarded belongings. I have never seen a more disheartening sight. Rusty trunks, tin boxes, boots, mittens, socks, knives and files were scattered in disorder over the giounds, mixed with torn pieces of deerskin, now soggy and smelling of mould from long exposure to the rain. ’ Half-way through the clutter, Ada stopped. Her lips drooped and her eyes filled with tears. I could see that she did not want to go again into Knight’s tent, and told her to go back and wait for me. At the door I had to stop to remove a barricade of boxes which Ada had put there to keep out marauding animals. On the threshold I paused. At tho right of the door, on a narrow canvas cot, lay Knight’s body, his head protruding from the deerskin sleeping bag, just as it had been when Ada closed his dead eyes two months before. Prepared as I was, it was still impossible to realise that this parchmentcovered skull and inert skeleton could have once belonged to that happy, careless young giant who was the comrade of my early exploring days. "Here, as outside, all was confusion, disorder. The dirt floor was littered with books and magazines. Tattered volumes from the Harvard classics and crumpled periodicals of ancient date were jumbled together with unwashed dishes and soiled clothing. It was a place which must have been the abode of despair long before death came. Across the room was a second canvas cot, in which Ada had slept during all those months when Knight lay slowly dying in his bag. There was a'rusty stove in one corner. The stove-pipe had toppled down, tearing a long rent in the canvas. Besidb Knight’s cot I found his diary, and sat down on an empty cartridge box to read it, my back to the cot, for I wanted to shut cut the worst of that gruesome scene.