Inquiries made by the American consuls in all the region near the finding place of the abandoned vessel resulted in nothing and a general quest throughout the world brought no better results. The British ship _Highlander_ reported that she had passed the _Marie Celeste_ and spoken her just south of the Azores, on December 4th, the day before she was picked up, and that the brigantine had answered “All well.” This is obviously a mistake, for the most easterly of the Azores lies about five hundred miles from the place where the ship was found or about twice as far as she was likely to have sailed in twenty-four hours. There are conflicting statements as to the actual state of affairs on the _Marie Celeste_ when found. One report says the ship’s clock was still ticking. On the other hand the log, which was found, had not been brought up beyond ten days prior to the discovery. One statement says that the ship’s papers and some instruments were gone, another that everything was intact. All indications are, however, that the crew had not been long away. A bottle of cough medicine stood upright and uncorked on the table next to the child’s plate. Any bit of rough weather or continued yawing and twisting before the wind with a loose rudder would have upset it. Again, on a sewing machine, which stood near the table in the cabin, lay a thimble, that must have rolled off to the floor if there had been any specially active dipping or lurching of the brigantine. Many theories have been propounded to explain the disappearance of the crew, not the least fantastic of which is the giant cuttlefish yarn. Those who spin this tale affect to believe that there are squidlike monsters in the deeper waters of midocean, large enough and bold enough to reach aboard a six hundred ton ship and snatch off fourteen persons one after the other. Personally, I like much better the idea that Sinbad’s roc had come back to life and carried the crew off to the Valley of Diamonds on his back. As in other mysteries, men have turned up from time to time who asserted that they knew the fate of the crew of the _Marie Celeste_, that they were the one and only survivor, that murder and foul crime had been committed on the brigantine and more in the same strain. In 1913, the _Strand Magazine_ (London) printed a tale which has about it some elements of credibility. The article was written by A. Howard Linford, head master of Peterborough Lodge, one of the considerable British preparatory schools. Mr. Linford specifically disowned responsibility for what he narrated, saying that he had no first hand knowledge. His story was, he said, based on some papers left him in three boxes by an old servant, Abel Fosdyk.