Some sea-captain recognized the Energon as the yacht Scud, once owned by Merrivale of the New York Yacht Club.  With this clue it was soon ascertained that the Scud had disappeared several years before.  The agent who sold her reported the purchaser to be merely another agent, a man he had seen neither before nor since.  The yacht had been reconstructed at Duffey’s Shipyard in New Jersey.  The change in her name and registry occurred at that time and had been legally executed.  Then the Energon had disappeared in the shroud of mystery.

In the meantime, Bassett was going crazy—­at least his friends and business associates said so.  He kept away from his vast business enterprises and said that he must hold his hands until the other masters of the world could join with him in the reconstruction of society—­proof indubitable that Goliah’s bee had entered his bonnet.  To reporters he had little to say.  He was not at liberty, he said, to relate what he had seen on Palgrave Island; but he could assure them that the matter was serious, the most serious thing that had ever happened.  His final word was that, the world was on the verge of a turnover, for good or ill he did not know, but, one way or the other, he was absolutely convinced that the turnover was coming.  As for business, business could go hang.  He had seen things, he had, and that was all there was to it.

There was a great telegraphing, during this period, between the local Federal officials and the state and war departments at Washington.  A secret attempt was made late one afternoon to board the Energon and place the captain under arrest—­the Attorney-General having given the opinion that the captain could be held for the murder of the ten “statesmen.”  The government launch was seen to leave Meigg’s Wharf and steer for the Energon, and that was the last ever seen of the launch and the men on board of it.  The government tried to keep the affair hushed up, but the cat was slipped out of the bag by the families of the missing men, and the papers were filled with monstrous versions of the affair.

The government now proceeded to extreme measures.  The battleship Alaska was ordered to capture the strange yacht, or, failing that, to sink her.  These were secret instructions; but thousands of eyes, from the water front and from the shipping in the harbour, witnessed what happened that afternoon.  The battleship got under way and steamed slowly toward the Energon.  At half a mile distant the battleship blew up—­simply blew up, that was all, her shattered frame sinking to the bottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and a few survivors strewing the surface.  Among the survivors was a young lieutenant who had had charge of the wireless on board the Alaska.  The reporters got hold of him first, and he talked.  No sooner had the Alaska got under way, he said, than a message was received from the Energon.  It was in the international code, and it was a warning to the Alaska to come no nearer than half a mile.  He had sent the message, through the speaking tube, immediately to the captain.  He did not know anything more, except that the Energon twice repeated the message and that five minutes afterward the explosion occurred.  The captain of the Alaska had perished with his ship, and nothing more was to be learned.