"We are heading toward Fair Haven in a fresh gale. In older vessels, like Polarstar, the cabins are in the bow, in the cross-section of all smells and movements. I am lying down in one of them and trying to sleep, but it feels more like riding prone on a camel. And it smells of diesel oil, salt, and spilled whiskey. I'm slowly getting rocked into sleep. Sinking deeper and deeper into the bed, but it is no longer a bed but an ice-floe. Everything above me is ice. Now the cabin is only a breathing hole and far up above lurks the polar bear. It can wait for an eternity, but my air will soon be finished. I have to get up there. I will still have time to glimps his black eye before the killer blow falls. I wake up with a start. The pillow is over my face. But the ship has stopped rocking - we have arrived.