noon
Every day he was becoming more familiar with their language and could understand more and more of their conversation , and he drew from it and their actions that they considered the situation most critical . Back of the igloos was a hill a couple of hundred feet high , and many times each day the men of the camp would climb it and look long and earnestly to the north , where the heaving billows of Hudson Straits and the sky line met , broken only here and there by huge icebergs that towered like great crystal mountains above the water . They were watching for the ice field that they hoped would drift down with each tide to bridge the sea that separated them from the distant mainland . The early April days were growing long and the sun 's rays shining more directly upon the world were gaining power , though not yet enough to bring the temperature up to zero even at high noon , but enough to remind the men that winter was aging , and the ice hourly less likely to come back . One of the Eskimos , Tuavituk by name , was an Angakok , or conjurer , and claimed to possess special powers which permitted him to communicate with Torngak , the Great Spirit who ruled their fortunes just as the Manitou rules the fortunes of the Indians . Tuavituk one day announced to the assembled Eskimos that something had been done to displease Torngak , and to punish them he had caused the storm to come that had so suddenly carried away the ice and left them marooned upon this desolate island , and here they would all perish eventually of starvation unless Torngak were appeased . This announcement occasioned a long discussion as to what the cause of their trouble could have been .