Africa
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A Migration of Thoughts
A short while after returning from India, diUmbria set forth anew in the Emerald Hunter, a fine vessel paid for by profits from his first real trade run to the lands beyond Africa. The ship put out from London with fifty one days of food on board, as well as an assemblage of supplies from lumber to sail cloth. While in London awaiting the completion of the ship, he had visited the public archives in the city as well as researched some volumes at the University of Oxford. In the Norwegian folklore he found some clues. Many tales placed the great beast in the North Sea, just beyond Britain’s wildest isles.…
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Return from India
Having reached India and spent some time gathering a fortune in goods from the markets along the western coast, it was from distant Pondicherry that diUmbria began his preparations to leave and return to Europe. For their last evening he planned a long visit to an open air restaurant where he ordered several rounds for his crew and a feast for himself of rum and daal, doogh and samosa, milk wine and mutton curry, finishing with a last serving of rosogolla. On their first venture out from port, headed to Ceylon, they are able to narrowly avoid five hostile xebecs. They did not escape without taking several rounds of cannon…
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The Edges of Africa
Africa hovered behind his eyes, a dream carried through the day. Its massive wildnerness called out to him, luring him with its uncharted mysteries. The Venetian Captain diUmbria had sailed to the wild continent many times of course. From when he was just starting out, south from the Adriatic; in those days he had feared the brutal pirates that roamed the waters around Tunis, Algiers, or Alexandria. When he had braved the Strait of Gibraltar he had soon turned south, like Hanno of old, and pushed his way as far as he dared. Little by little, to Arguin, to Sierra Leone, to Sao Tome- to the Cape itself, over…
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Sailing out to the Sunrise
There came a day when several seasoned explorers were gathered in a tavern in Seville. It was late in the evening, the day’s work done, and the conversation began to tilt to selecting their next endeavor. It was never certain, afterward, exactly whose idea planted the seed; but most would agree that it was Captain Kosevo that first suggested a voyage to far distant Edo. Some of the rest of the group included a weathered pirate, Captain Cyril, as well as the interepid explorer diUmbria and the wealthy merchant Juan Garrion. Soon enough they all seemed caught in an inexorible tide sweeping them across the world to Japan. In just…
