The Infinite Sea

7 - Norge to the Arctic

Back on board ship, Captain Vanderveer and some of the senior officers sat with two well dressed gentlemen and rose politely as Kitty entered the room.

"This is Signor Da Firenze and Signor Carluccio," the Captain introduced their new guests. He looked as if it hadn't been for the presence of these guests, he might have unleashed a torrent of outrage upon the two youngsters. "My First Officer you have already met, and this is Mr Jonas, our engineering consultant, and Miss Whitechapel who is travelling with the Countess."

"Ah yes," said Da Firenze, the taller of the two men who boasted an almost impossibly curly moustache and smelled strongly of peppermint. "Your mistress has been most concerned for your welfare, very distressed."

Kitty thanked him for this and slipped off to the Countess' cabin on the port side. Jonas had intended to head for his cabin as well but Thorsten beckoned for him to sit with them.

The two gentlemen were Italians, bound for a scientific exploration in the Arctic Ocean, but their previous vessel, the St Clair, had been forced to abandon its voyage after most of the crew were struck with a rather unpleasant vomiting bug. Da Firenze and Carluccio had been stranded at the tiny fishing village of Iberstad for almost a month before convincing a local fisherman to carry them to Nordheim. From there they had hoped to stand a better chance of obtaining passage back to Europe and reattempt their voyage at a later date. The arrival of the Northern Splendour however had presented them with an opportunity to salvage their expedition.

Vanderveer listened intently as the two Italians made their proposition to him. Rather than returning south towards mainland Europe as planned, they would head northwards and then out into the North Sea. They could stock up with enough supplies from Nordheim and some of the neighbouring ports beforehand and once at sea could hunt whales and seals both for food and profit. The ship was fortuitously at a stage where the remaining itinerary was flexible, as long as Da Firenze, clearly the leader of the two, could reimburse any potential lost trade in addition to the standard fees of contracting the Splendour. This was a sum he was apparently more than comfortable in paying.

It seemed Giovanni Da Firenze had made quite a name for himself after inheriting his father's failing tailor shop, turning it around with daring styles and superior quality that soon had gentlemen travelling from miles around. Da Firenze had then gone on to purchase several other shops in Rome and Milan, but decided to hand the running of his businesses over to a manager and become a silent partner. Instead of just retiring and living in luxury with the tidy fortune he was continuing to accumulate, he took up archaeology. He started with excavating ancient Roman ruins in the Tuscan hills then moved onto the Hellenics and Turkistan. He'd soon become equally renowned for archaeology and exploration as he had for tailoring. Every project he took was fleeting though, as soon as he had completed a dig or unearthed some ancient relic his interest would pass and he would move onto some other adventure. That was until he came across the myth of the lost civilization of the Antikaritos.

More powerful than the Khans and more ancient than the Egyptians, this strange people had disappeared from the face of the earth over six centuries ago. They had been a strange race of philosophers and scientists, harnessing the elements and building a grand society, far ahead of their time. Without any warning though, they disappeared from the face of the earth — all that remained of them now were rumours, legend and the occasional footnotes in the more radical history journals. Da Firenze however had no doubt that these people had lived and walked the earth, so much so that he had become obsessed with uncovering undeniable evidence of their existence. Over the past few years this fascination had driven him to invest a significant portion of his finances into gathering all possible information about the existence of the Antikaritos together. The biggest hurdle to discovering more about this civilisation was the fact that no one was actually sure where geographically the Antikaritos had been based. Some sources believed they had resided on a mighty island between Italia and the Hellenic Republic but an earthquake had driven this land beneath the waves to the bottom of the sea, whilst others were convinced a huge part of the Spanish mainland had been severed by a mighty volcano, sending the Antikaritos society off into the Atlantic to never be seen again. Da Firenze however was now convinced by reports from various sailors and, in particular, the diary of a 17th century alchemist, that the remains of this great culture were located on a small, yet undiscovered island somewhere in the remote Arctic Ocean.