The command now devolved on Buddington, who showed himself singularly unfitted for his duties. In the first place, he abolished the Sunday services, a step which is always inadvisable, and which, in this case, was absolutely criminal, as the men were quite ill-disciplined enough as it was. In the second place, he developed a taste for sending out exploring parties and calling them back to the ship again for no comprehensible reason, so that no discoveries of any value were made, in spite of the exceptionally favourable situation in which the expedition was then placed. It was, however, after the _Polaris_ had been set free and while she was on her way home that he gave the most convincing proof of his incompetence, with the result that a large portion of his crew came within an ace of absolute disaster. The ship happened to be caught in the ice with which she drifted into Baffin Bay. On October 15 she was severely nipped, whereupon the panic-stricken Buddington promptly cried out, “Throw everything upon the ice.” Of course the whole ship was instantly cast into the direst confusion. The sailors hurled everything that they could lay hands on on to the floe, including a bundle which was subsequently found to contain two of Hans Christian’s offspring. Men, women, and children leapt after them, and though Tyson did his best to calm them his efforts were not of much avail. While everything was still in confusion and while half the crew were on the ice and the rest on board, the ship suddenly freed herself and flew off before the wind at the rate of ten or eleven knots an hour. It was not until morning came that the castaways were able to take a serious survey of their situation. They found that they numbered nineteen, among them being two Eskimo women, and Hans Christian’s youngest child, Charlie Polaris, which had seen the light of day on board the ship after which he was named while she was lying in winter quarters. The floe on which they were cast away was over a mile in diameter, but though, for the time being, it made a serviceable raft, there was, of course, no knowing when it would split up. For over six months, that is to say, from the middle of October 1872 to the end of April 1873, the floe drifted steadily south, diminishing in size as it went. The most serious split occurred on March 11, after which it only measured a hundred yards in length by seventy in breadth. Provisions, too, which were never exactly plentiful—they had started on their adventurous voyage equipped only with eleven and a half bags of bread, fourteen small hams, some cans of meat and soup, a little chocolate and sugar, and 630 pounds of pemmican—became painfully scarce, and had they not been able to eke out their menu with a few dogs which had been thrown on to the ice, and with sundry seals which had been caught during the latter part of their voyage, they would have died of hunger.