ALL IN HER HEAD (profanity alert):

Far below the Antarctic circle, I watch a woman cry real tears because she can't get gluten-free toast.

Mary is a plummy old English lady traveling alone, an Agatha Christie figure who I expected would spend her time solving mysteries on the ship. When people started disappearing in the Ross Sea, Mary would work the case and gather everyone in the ship's saloon for the spectacular reveal.

Unfortunately, Mary turned out to be a bit of a shipboard bully, bad-talking the other passengers instead of helping to solve their murders. But I am still not ready to see her go to pieces over toast.

Conor, our juvenile delinquent chef, emerges from the galley and drapes himself across the table to soothe her.

"What can I get you, love?" he coos, "Can I get you an egg?"

"I don't want an egg."

"Can I get you some bacon?"

"I don't want bacon. What I want is a second piece of toast."

"I'm so sorry, but we don't have enough for all the gluten-free passengers."

Her face darkens. "I know for a fact that there are some people who were not gluten-free before they got on this ship."

The accusation hangs in the air, unanswerable, and Mary starts to cry. These are angry tears, tears that demand gluten-free justice. The single piece of corn toast she has been allotted for breakfast lies mute on her plate, an affront to God and man.

Rodney convenes a summit in the ship's auditorium to address the gluten crisis. Only passengers with dietary restrictions are invited. The rest of us must huddle around the open hatch one deck above, straining to hear. We are deep in the Ross Sea, five hundred miles from the nearest human being, and this is the most exciting thing that has happened on the ship in weeks.

There are tears of laughter on the bridge when I tell the Russian crew about the Great Antarctic Glutiny.

"You mean if this woman eats bread, she will die?"

"Not really. She just gets sick."

"Yuri, come here! You have to hear this. If she eats bread, the woman will die."

"She won't die. Gluten causes digestive problems for some people. But it's also become a sort of health fad."

"What is 'gluten'? Is that even a Russian word?"

Here they've got me. Tolstoy never wrote about gluten (kleikovina), and the ship's dictionary is strictly nautical. Trying to paraphrase the concept only exposes the holes in my own understanding of this mysterious, flavorful substance.

"It's some kind of a protein in grain. I think it makes things taste good."

Yuri makes a skeptical face.

"It doesn't kill anyone," I insist. "But people can get digestive... unpleasantness."

"So bread will make her sick?"

"Yes."

"Can she eat potatoes?"

"Yes. And corn."

Any hope of sympathy from the Russians evaporates.

"Then let her eat potatoes. Let her eat corn. Or let them all stay home and eat whatever the f[***] they want."

The Russians are seasick, homesick, and lacking in sympathy for the unique challenges that confront the Antarctic tourist. Repeated trips to the Ross Sea have brought them no closer to understanding why people would pay money--tens of thousands of American dollars!--to stare at ice when they could instead be visiting the big duty-free shops at Busan, or spending a pleasant two weeks fishing off the coast of Sakhalin Island, where the fish practically jump into your net and you can sometimes see bears right on the shore.

No one has asked the crew if they have nut allergies, gluten sensitivity, hypertension, lactose intolerance, or any other kind of dietary restriction. Their culinary options are to stay home in Vladivostok earning nothing, or get on the ship and eat what they are given. The closest the Russians come to a dietary preference is the battery of hot sauce and condiment bottles that crowds the center of their table at each meal, along with trays of raw onion, garlic, and weapons-grade mustard.

The conversation on the bridge soon turns to fish and the best ways of preparing them, and I leave the crew to go lie in my bunk for a while, sliding back and forth in time with the motion of the sea, thinking about gluten.

We have been at sea for a very long time.

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