What happened that night Walter Bassett has never divulged.  But it is known that he rode down in his auto to the water front, chartered one of Crowley’s launches, and was put aboard the strange yacht.  It is further known that when he returned to the shore, three hours later, he immediately despatched a sheaf of telegrams to his nine fellow-captains of industry who had received letters from Goliah.  These telegrams were similarly worded, and read:  “The yacht Energon has arrived.  There is something in this.  I advise you to come.”

Bassett was laughed at for his pains.  It was a huge laugh that went up (for his telegrams had been made public), and the popular song on Goliah revived and became more popular than ever.  Goliah and Bassett were cartooned and lampooned unmercifully, the former, as the Old Man of the Sea, riding on the latter’s neck.  The laugh tittered and rippled through clubs and social circles, was restrainedly merry in the editorial columns, and broke out in loud guffaws in the comic weeklies.  There was a serious side as well, and Bassett’s sanity was gravely questioned by many, and especially by his business associates.

Bassett had ever been a short-tempered man, and after he sent the second sheaf of telegrams to his brother captains, and had been laughed at again, he remained silent.  In this second sheaf he had said:  “Come, I implore you.  As you value your life, come.”  He arranged all his business affairs for an absence, and on the night of March 2 went on board the Energon.  The latter, properly cleared, sailed next morning.  And next morning the newsboys in every city and town were crying “Extra.”

In the slang of the day, Goliah had delivered the goods.  The nine captains of industry who had failed to accept his invitation were dead.  A sort of violent disintegration of the tissues was the report of the various autopsies held on the bodies of the slain millionaires; yet the surgeons and physicians (the most highly skilled in the land had participated) would not venture the opinion that the men had been slain.  Much less would they venture the conclusion, “at the hands of parties unknown.”  It was all too mysterious.  They were stunned.  Their scientific credulity broke down.  They had no warrant in the whole domain of science for believing that an anonymous person on Palgrave Island had murdered the poor gentlemen.

One thing was quickly learned, however; namely, that Palgrave Island was no myth.  It was charted and well known to all navigators, lying on the line of 160 west longitude, right at its intersection by the tenth parallel north latitude, and only a few miles away from Diana Shoal.  Like Midway and Fanning, Palgrave Island was isolated, volcanic and coral in formation.  Furthermore, it was uninhabited.  A survey ship, in 1887, had visited the place and reported the existence of several springs and of a good harbour that was very dangerous of approach.  And that was all that was known of the tiny speck of land that was soon to have focussed on it the awed attention of the world.