Rosa Maria, a young history professor, sets out with her daughter Maria Joana on a cruise that will travel through the Mediterranean to Bombay, India, where they will meet her husband. This pleasure cruise also allows Rosa Maria to get to know places about which she talks in her classes but which she has never visited. With stops at such locations as Ceuta, Marseille, the ruins of Pompei, Athens, the pyramids of Egypt, Istanbul, this trip is also a journey through thousands of years of history -- through the Mediterranean civilization that marked and still marks Western cultures. On the cruise, Rosa Maria will meet three impressive women, well-known figures of different nationalities: a renowned French businesswoman; an Italian former model; and a Greek teacher and actress; and especially the ship's captain, an American of Polish origin. But a strange threat disturbs the cruise and menaces the ship and the life of its passengers.