December 31st, A.D. 1899, Day 143 at Sea.

  I am tempted to lament our fate, or to curse whichever Devil invented the steamboats and automatic rifles that spelled the end of our fair Ship. But this will be my last entry. I can feel it in the weariness that settled on my lungs, see it in the tremors that render my handwriting so sadly illegible, hear it in the merciless crash of waves against the tender’s hull. So, in a vain attempt to save my immortal soul, I shall not weigh it down further with sin of thought or word.

  Instead, I hope against hope that if anyone reads these lines, they will relay word to my fair wife Brittany, and my children, Jefferson and Winona, and tell them that I love them very much. My crew, were they still alive, would wish the same, and while I understand that a captain who survives his crew deserves not his position at all, I hope that you may believe me that my late survival was through no fault of mine, but instead by the foolish wish of the men under my command. I have no way to repay their kindness, and their faith, other than begging you, dear reader, to pray for their souls and spread word of their untimely deaths.

  Attached to this book, you may by God’s grace find the charter, detailing all of my Crew’s names and known places of residency. On next page, find stories to tell th. families abt. th. bravery. Each should have at least one sentence. Wished to write more, but time coming to an end.

  Please pray for my soul. May God Save the King. And if you find a cat on this boat, please take care of it as if it were yours.

  Captain Jerome Miller, A.D. 1899/1900

  -Last Log Book entry of the H.M.S. Spirit of the Century, found ashore in an unspecified location in New England, 1903

  Immy hadn’t been petted for days now. It was outrageous.

  Even when she rubbed her head against the Captain’s hand, he did not pet her!

  At first Immy thought it was because he was still writing, but the wind had long since carried away the little feather he wrote with. Immy hadn’t caught it in time, even though she tried. He probably should have held on to it tighter, but he was sleeping, and so perhaps he was dreaming of flying, and let the little feather go. Immy also dreamed of flying, sometimes, to catch all those birds that taunted her from the rigging where she couldn’t reach them. Not that Immy was scared of heights. The birds were just too fast.

  But more importantly, the Captain had been sleeping for far too long, and Immy was getting annoyed. Didn’t the Captain know that he had important duties he couldn’t sleep away? Like petting her, or feeding her, or running the ship? Immy also had duties, and you wouldn’t catch her slacking off. No, she took her tasks seriously. Like wandering the ship whenever she pleased, for example, or getting petted by the crew, or stealing food from the kitchen in creative ways that made the cook laugh.

  She missed the cook. He was still on the ship, like the rest of the crew. But he’d gone to sleep like many of the others on the ship, just before it started sailing downwards. Immy found that curious. She certainly hadn’t been able to sleep once the loud animals had started eating the hull.

  They’d come from another ship, those loud, black animals, but that ship had been weird. It didn’t even have sails, but it had still been faster than the Captain’s. The black animals had been very fast, too. And strong. They’d had bitten right through the wood and even the metal, making a mess of most of Immy’s favorite hiding spots. Luckily, they hadn’t eaten her own ship, which had hung off the starboard side. It was her favorite hiding pace, so she hid there when everything got so loud.

  It wasn’t loud now. It was so quiet. Immy wished she could have made the cook laugh so it wouldn’t be so quiet anymore. But that was impossible now.

  Immy padded along her ship. It was only about 30 cats long, and only had a single sail, instead of the many, many sails the Spirit of the Century had. She liked her ship better, though, because it was named after her. The crew had told her that, and that it was a mighty vessel, and also that she was its fearsome captain! So she stood at the bowsprit and looked fearsome, even though she was a little scared she might fall into the ocean.

  Would the captain wake up and fish her out if she did? He’d done it before, at least once at sea, and perhaps once or twice at port. But he was really fast asleep, and she didn’t want to bother him. His chest was a great place to sleep, after all. Usually, at least.

  Now he was all cold and clammy, and she had to scare away all the flies that wanted to steal her napping spot. They weren’t even the loud flies that had dug deep into the Captain’s chest. Immy wasn’t sure if she would have scared those away. No, just regular old flies. Scaring them away would have been an easy task for a fearsome captain like her, if she weren’t so hungry. As it was, the flies didn’t even pay attention to her anymore. It was outrageous! Immy was sure that once she got some food in her belly, those flies would hum a very different tune!

  Food. If only the other cat hadn’t eaten it all. She must have, Immy was sure of it. Because it was quite obvious the other cat was a filthy thief. She had stolen her favourite napping spot atop the Captain’s chest, too, so why not all the food as well? Immy had, of course, tried to scare her away, but the other cat was a tough nut to crack. She just laid there, eyes closed, between all the flies, as cold as the captain, and thus untouchable. Immy walked over and swatted her once or twice before giving up. No reaction. Just cold paws. The nerve!

  With a tiny noise of indignant indifference, Immy decided it was time to climb to the crow’s nest to look out for other ships. If she spotted one, she would ring the tiny bell the crew had placed there for her, and that would wake the captain up.

  Immy sat lookout for a long time. Not too long, just long enough.

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  Eventually, she saw another ship approaching, its dark sails almost invisible in the deep night. Not to her, though, because she was a cat, and could see well in the dark, especially if the stars were out, and the sea was calm like tonight.

  As the ship approached, it became clear the ship’s sails were not the only thing that was black. The hull was, too. Just like Immy! She immediately liked it. She was so excited, she even forgot to ring her bell as the ship approached. It rung on its own, though, when their hulls touched. The sound echoed over the waves, clear and bright, and below her, she could see the captain stir.

  Ha! She had been right. As always.

  The ship was about as big as Immy’s, but she could have sworn that it had looked far bigger in the distance. She only spotted a single person on board, a tall, pale man wearing dark oilskin and holding something that looked like a harpoon, but with a really long hook. Broader, too. But impractical to catch fish with, and thus not interesting.

  Immy climbed down the rigging to welcome the stranger aboard, as was her duty as a captain. For his part, the man just watched her approach. Or at least Immy thought he was watching. It was hard to see his face under his dark oilskin hat, so perhaps he’d missed the part where she briefly lost her footing and got all tangled up in the ropes. He probably had.

  Landing on the deck with all four feet, Immy saw that the Captain had gotten up, but a different captain lay next to him, with the stupid thief cat, and the flies, and the hole where the loud fly had bitten him still on his chest. She rubbed against the real captain’s legs, and he smiled, but it was a sad smile. When he tried to pick her up, Immy slipped through his fingers to stand atop the starboard railing, facing the stranger.

  “Hello,” Immy said.

  “Hello,” the Stranger said. It sounded weird. Like the strange, beardless men the crew sometimes visited when they were ashore.

  “I’m Immy.”

  “Hello, Immy. You are a very good cat,” the stranger said, stating the obvious.

  Now that she thought about it, Immy didn’t really know what to say. There had to be some procedure, but she didn’t know it.

  “Do you want to come aboard?” Immy asked.

  “Oh, no, I was actually looking to invite you over to mine,” said the stranger.

  That was odd. Why would Immy want to go to his ship? She had her own boat and could go wherever she wanted.

  But the Captain looked at Immy again, still sad, even when Immy pressed her head against his legs, and put his foot on the railing. Then, with one jump, he boarded the other vessel. Immy didn’t quite know how to feel about that.

  “Are you coming?” asked the stranger. It sounded calm and welcoming. Nice, almost. But Immy couldn’t.

  “A captain can’t leave her vessel,” Immy said.

  “Oh?” said the stranger. “I think that’s alright. Your captain did, too.”

  Immy shook her head. “He didn’t! That was the crew, they made him go. He got bitten by a loud fly, and they put him into my ship so I could keep him company until the bite goes away.”

  The stranger looked at Immy for a while longer, then jumped onto her deck with an odd motion that didn’t look or sound like jumping at all. More like gliding on invisible wings.

  “Are you a bird?” Immy asked, immediately suspicious.

  The figure laughed, bent down a little, and scratched Immy between the ears, and so all was forgiven. Then the stranger walked over to the other captain that still slept on her ship. With a slow, deliberate flick of the weird harpoon, a thin bit of yarn that Immy hadn’t even seen before came undone, and on the other ship, the Captain sighed and went below deck.

  “Don’t you want to follow him? See what’s down below?” the stranger asked.

  That sounded very enticing indeed and made her whiskers twitch, but Immy shook her head again. “I won’t leave the ship.”

  “Even if it goes under?”

  Immy didn’t really know what that meant, but she shook her head again, nevertheless. “A captain stays until the very end.” She didn’t quite understand what that meant, either, but when the crew had lowered her boat into the water, her Captain had said it over and over—more than three times—and so it must be true.

  “You are a very good cat,” the stranger said, rightfully, and in one fluid motion picked Immy up, sat down on the small bench opposite the rudder (underneath the tarp, where it was nice and shaded during the summer) and nestled Immy into his arms. Then the stranger started petting her in earnest, and Immy started to purr. The dark oilskin didn’t feel like oilskin at all. It was soft and warm and welcoming. A good place to rest. To sleep. To, perhaps, dream.

  The robed figure picked up the Captain’s book and leafed through it. It was hard to tell what the figure thought because of the dark hat, but he seemed to be happy with what he read. With a sigh and what felt like a wink at Immy, the book vanished into the oilskin.

  “That’ll be our little secret, okay?” the stranger whispered conspiratorially.

  Immy, who loved a good conspiracy and adored secrets, rolled to her back and presented her belly for petting.

  She got what she wanted, and so adequately bribed, she nodded. “Sure. What are you going to do with it?”

  “Bring it to the shore,” said the stranger. “To the right place, where it needs to be so it can be found.”

  “Are you a courier?” Immy asked, because she liked couriers. They were the nicest kind of passengers, because they brought treats.

  The figure chuckled. “In a way, yes.”

  “And you sail the ocean in your ship and bring things where they need to be so they can be found?”

  “Yes!” the stranger said and laughed.

  “That sounds nice,” Immy said. “I will do that, too, with my ship.”

  “Oh? All alone? Just you and your ship, little Immy?”

  “I would have liked the Captain to be there, too. But I guess he needs to go back to his own ship, doesn’t he?”

  The figure just nodded and resumed petting Immy.

  “Then yes.”

  “Do you know that sometimes, it takes a long, long time to get everything to its right place?”

  “No, I didn’t know that…” Immy said, eyes opening slowly as she thought. Then they closed again, content. “But whenever I wanted back into a cabin, all I had to do was paw at the door, meow loudly, and it would open. So whenever I want to go back to the ship and the captain, I will just find you and you will let me back in.”

  The figure tilted their head at this statement of self-evident and true fact, but eventually, it seemed as though a smile flashed in the shadow under the dark hat, and the figure nodded.

  “Of course, Immy,” the figure said, and got up. Immy was lifted by strong arms and deposited behind the wheel. Exactly where a captain belonged.

  The stranger petted her one last time, then jumped back to the black vessel. The wind picked up and carried Immy forward, and when she turned to look over the aft, there was another boat behind her, with the sleeping captain and the thief cat in it, and there was a long, thin rope that connected them.

  “Here, let me…” the stranger said, and it sounded close even though Immy couldn’t even see the black ship anymore.

  “Nono, don’t worry,” Immy said, and walked to the railing. She leaned forward, (the captain was no longer with her, so she had to be careful) extended her claws, and with but the tiniest flick, cut the rope. With the ballast gone, her sails bellowed, and the ship rocked. In the crow’s nest, her tiny bell rang as her mighty vessel sailed onward, into the starry night.

  As the 20th century progressed, and inventions such as radar and the radio revolutionized naval safety, rumors of Ghost Ships became increasingly rare. Still, a few of the most curious legends remain, with the myth of the Immortality being chief among them.

  Several eyewitnesses, former passengers of vessels of all shapes and sizes from all over the world, have recounted tales where, late at night after an unfortunate death aboard, they thought they noticed a ship sailing besides their own. Each story varies, of course, but all of them have two things in common: The ship in question was a sailing vessel, with at least one, but up to as much as a hundred sails; and when the wind was quiet, and the ship was still, one could hear a faint meow prowl across the waves.

  -From: Naval Myths of the 20th Century and Beyond, 1st Edition.