Drifting through deep and vertiginous dreams, I find myself suddenly awoken by a monstrous roaring elsewhere in the camp. A bear! Entirely unprepared for such an encounter at the South Pole, I race out into the blizzard and attempt to drive the creature away bare-handed. The beast looks up from the wreckage of the food store, and snarls as it lumbers towards me through the whirling snow.

I wrestle the bear.

I awake some hours later in the medical tent, my head pounding and feverish but my cold-weather clothing without a scratch.