Liber Neptuni - Chapter 59

Verses

Day one: the engine died at 03:17. I wrote the time because numbers looked useful then.

Day two: fog. The radio answers in my own voice half a second before I speak.

Day three: found paw prints across the wet deck. We have no cat aboard.

Day four: I placed tuna by the mast. In the morning the tuna was gone and the mast was warm.

Day five: the compass points downward whenever I think about home.

Day six: a bell rang beneath the hull. Three times. There is no bell beneath the hull.

Day seven: I dreamed the ship was floating on the surface of an eye.

Day eight: the fog opened long enough to show towers under the water, each with windows lit yellow.

Day nine: I stopped calling them reflections after one window opened.

Day ten: the radio said, You have always been below us. I unplugged it. It continued politely.

Day eleven: the invisible cat finally appeared, gray and furious, sitting on the chart of coordinates we should avoid.

Day twelve: I have decided the cat is captain. Morale has improved.

Day thirteen: we followed her stare through the fog and missed a reef by meters.

Day fourteen: I apologized for doubting her credentials.

Day fifteen: the underwater bells began again, but farther away.

Day sixteen: land on horizon. I am afraid to approach because the chart says there is no land.

Day seventeen: the cat jumped ashore first.

Day eighteen: if this notebook is found, please feed her before deciding which parts of me were mad.