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.
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