Ada watched three of the four men in her party walk away and disappear. She was left on the island with Lorne Knight, who was dying.
## The Caregiver: Ada and Knight
What followed the departure of the three men was a period of approximately five months — from late January to late June 1923 — in which Ada Blackjack was the sole functional person in a two-person camp whose other occupant was progressively incapacitated.
Knight’s scurvy continued to worsen. Scurvy in its advanced stages is brutal: the body’s collagen breaks down, old wounds reopen, the gums deteriorate, the joints swell and ache, exhaustion becomes overwhelming. Knight could not hunt, could not carry heavy loads, could barely move in the final weeks of his life.
Ada hunted for them both. She had come to the island as a seamstress with no experience shooting. She had learned on the island, through necessity, how to use a rifle. She trapped foxes, the small white Arctic foxes that moved through the island’s terrain. She collected bird eggs from the coastal cliffs when the season allowed. She shot at seals when she could get them in her sights.
She gave Knight most of the fresh meat she acquired, understanding — or at least acting in accordance with the understanding — that fresh meat was the treatment for scurvy. Vitamin C was not yet identified as the specific nutritional element involved, but the connection between fresh food and the disease’s progression was understood enough that she prioritized Knight’s access to the meat she hunted.