The war-monsters of Japan were loosed in mighty fleets.  The Philippines were gathered in as a child gathers a nosegay.  It took longer for the battleships to travel to Hawaii, to Panama, and to the Pacific Coast.  The United States was panic-stricken, and there arose the powerful party of dishonourable peace.  In the midst of the clamour the Energon arrived in San Francisco Bay and Goliah spoke once more.  There was a little brush as the Energon came in, and a few explosions of magazines occurred along the war-tunnelled hills as the coast defences went to smash.  Also, the blowing up of the submarine mines in the Golden Gate made a remarkably fine display.  Goliah’s message to the people of San Francisco, dated as usual from Palgrave Island, was published in the papers.  It ran: 

“Peace?  Peace be with you.  You shall have peace.  I have spoken to this purpose before.  And give you me peace.  Leave my yacht Energon alone.  Commit one overt act against her and not one stone in San Francisco shall stand upon another.

“To-morrow let all good citizens go out upon the hills that slope down to the sea.  Go with music and laughter and garlands.  Make festival for the new age that is dawning.  Be like children upon your hills, and witness the passing of war.  Do not miss the opportunity.  It is your last chance to behold what henceforth you will be compelled to seek in museums of antiquities.

“I promise you a merry day,

“Goliah.”

The madness of magic was in the air.  With the people it was as if all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood.  Order and law had passed away from the universe; but the sun still shone, the wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed—­that was the amazing thing about it.  That water should continue to run downhill was a miracle.  All the stabilities of the human mind and human achievement were crumbling.  The one stable thing that remained was Goliah, a madman on an island.  And so it was that the whole population of San Francisco went forth next day in colossal frolic upon the hills that overlooked the sea.  Brass bands and banners went forth, brewery wagons and Sunday-school picnics—­all the strange heterogeneous groupings of swarming metropolitan life.

On the sea-rim rose the smoke from the funnels of a hundred hostile vessels of war, all converging upon the helpless, undefended Golden Gate.  And not all undefended, for out through the Golden Gate moved the Energon, a tiny toy of white, rolling like a straw in the stiff sea on the bar where a strong ebb-tide ran in the teeth of the summer sea-breeze.  But the Japanese were cautious.  Their thirty- and forty-thousand-ton battleships slowed down half a dozen miles offshore and manoeuvred in ponderous evolutions, while tiny scout-boats (lean, six-funnelled destroyers) ran in, cutting blackly the flashing sea like so many sharks.  But, compared with the Energon, they were leviathans.  Compared with them, the Energon was as the sword of the arch-angel Michael, and they the forerunners of the hosts of hell.