Catherine slipped off her shoe, picked up the pen from the captains desk with her toes and began to write on a scrap of paper without knowing how she would roll up the finished parchment, slip it into the empty rum bottle left rolling on the floor of the captain’s cabin or kick it through the open window into the open sea with Beckhamesk accuracy.<br/><br/>“To whomever finds this note.<br/><br/>Sir, I am desperate and beg for your help.<br/><br/>A fellow prisoner and I have been locked in the Captain’s cabin onboard the Phantom (AKA - Marie Celest) for over two weeks. Though we hear voices from time to time we have seen no one except a brief visit from the Captain. In all of this time, no one has reported to the Captain – which I would consider to be gross negligence on a ship of this size. Our only contact with any other human, though I use the word in its broadest possible sense, was with a thief who popped by steal a few jewels and to fondle me (which wasn’t at all unpleasant – much gratitude to ‘the hanged man’). Mary and I have long since exhausted our limited repertoire of sea shanties and drinking songs and have covered every square inch of the Cabin during our epic game of I-Spy. In all of this time we have eaten only two biscuits and had a sip of water, which may be just as well as we’ve not been given the opportunity to use the bathroom.<br/><br/>If anyone with a kind heart reads my note, I implore you spare us a thought and perhaps call in to suggest how two women chained at opposite ends of a Cabin may entertain themselves until things start to warm up.<br/><br/>I will be forever in your debt<br/><br/>Lady Catherine Montrose.”<br/>