“Well, the only explanation I could figure out was this. The day before we missed Pills we’d been hailed by a ship, the Alice Lee, bound for Boston, U.S.A. They had sickness on board and had run out of some drug, I forget what, and the captain wanted to know if we could let him have some. We could, so he sent a boat across with two men in it. I concluded that one of them swiped the cat. Afterwards Geordie recalled that Pills had been sitting, perky and impudent, on a coil of rope as the men came over the side. He was never seen again but he wasn’t missed till the next day. It was Geordie’s turn for him that night but Geordie thought cook had him and being sorry for cook, who was looking like a lopsided squirrel with toothache, made no fuss. He didn’t get worried till the next afternoon. The men all maintained that no sailor would ever steal another ship’s cat, especially a black one, and blamed Cannibal Jim, as I’ve said. But I never believed even Cannibal Jim would play fast and loose with luck that way. We certainly had nothing but squalls and typhoons the rest of the voyage and finally a man overboard.

“But the most puzzling thing was that Pills took six months to get home. I went west that year and took to voyaging the Pacific so I never fell in with any of the Alice Lee’s crew again but I did find out that she got to Boston two months after she’d passed us. Suppose Pills was on her. That left four months to be accounted for. Where was he? I’ll tell you where he was. Traveling the miles between Boston and Halifax on his own black legs.”

Tillytuck snorted incredulously.

“Either that or he swum it,” said Uncle Horace sternly. “I find it easier to believe he walked. Don’t ask me how he knew the road. I tell you that I saw, then and there, that cats had forgotten more than human beings ever knew and I made up my mind to cultivate their society. When this little fellow hopped up on me last night I just told him to pick out a soft spot on my old carcase and snuggle down.”