The _Cyclops_ case naturally excited and disturbed the public mind, with the result of an unusual crop of fancies, lies, false alarms and hoaxes. On May 8, 1923, for instance, Miss Dorothy Walker of Pittsburgh reported that she had found a bottle at Atlantic City containing the message “_Cyclops_ wrecked at Sea.--H.” This note was written on a piece of note paper torn from a memorandum book and was yellowed with age. The bottle was tightly corked and closed with sealing wax--a substance which shipwrecked sailors do not have in their pockets at the moment of peril. Other such messages were found from time to time. One floated ashore at Velasco, Tex., also in a bottle. It read: “U. S. S. _Cyclops_, torpedoed April 7, 1918, Lat. 46.25, Long. 35.11. All on board when German submarine fired on us. Lifeboats going to pieces. No one to be left to tell the tale.” The position indicated is midway between Hatteras and the Azores, where the _Cyclops_ had no business and probably never was. It was found after the war, as already suggested, that no German submarine had been in any so distant region at the time. We may accordingly look upon this bottle as another flagon of disordered fancy, another press from the old “_spurlos versenkt_” madness. Finally, in their search for something that might explain this dark and baffling affair, the hunters came upon a suggestive fact. The commander of the _Cyclops_ was Lieutenant-Commander George W. Worley. It now came to light--and it struck many persons like a revelation--that this man was really G. W. Wichtman, that he was born a German; ergo, that he was the man responsible for this disaster to our navy. It proved true that Wichtman-Worley was a German by birth, but he had been brought to the United States as a child and had spent twenty-six years in the American navy. No one in official position suspected him, but the professional Hun _strafers_ insisted that this was the typical act of a German, no matter how long separated from his native land, how little acquainted with it or how long and faithfully attached to the service of his adopted country. It is only fair to the memory of a blameless officer to say that Lieutenant-Commander Worley could not have done such a complete job had he wished to and that his record is officially without the least blemish.