Two brothers grow up in a loveless house with their father, after the unexplained death of their mother. Miguel, the elder brother, copes by wandering restlessly, until one day he stows away on a cargo ship to Greenland. Leaving his brother, Jorge, to absorb the tantalizing tales of the servant woman Adia, whose stories and infallible memory give him a vivid picture of his mother when she was alive, of the golden age of their fading city, once a Spanish port town in the Pacific, where Vasco da Gama's great flagship the San Gabriel strayed long ago on its voyage to India, met disaster and...