“No, the trouble is,” stated Hike, very seriously, “that the bezingelum is getting charged by contact with the ornithigulus.” “Oh, I see. Then I suppose I’ll have to stop that deep _thinking_ I was telling you about, and show you how to fix it.” Poodle crawled out, and sat down beside Hike. They said nothing, but stretched themselves out on the dry grass. Soon, there was a sound of deep, slow breathing. In half an hour, Hike awoke—to find that they had been asleep! Dragging the unfortunate Poodle to the _Hustle_, he made him hold wires and pliers, while he tightened the fastening of the rudder. While he worked, he glanced at the valleys and mountains about them. He exclaimed, “Gee! Say, Poodle, get your gun ready again. There’s a guy—” “A _what_?” “Hush! Quick. Man’s crawling up the hillside, with a long rifle that looks like business. I wonder what—” From the nearest clump of bushes suddenly came a harsh loud voice: “Well, you young fellers won’t wonder long! You-all better come with me.” A tall man in home-spun, tall, gaunt, fierce as a wild beast, was covering them with his rifle. From the other bushes rose a dozen men, young and old, all savage as the first mountaineer. Hike started to explain that the tetrahedral was not an anarchist machine or anything like that, but the first man bade him to “Shut up!” The hill where the _Hustle_ had landed was the center of a camp of moonshiners, who had been driven from their stills by a big raid by revenue officers. They had fled here, with rifles, bags of corn-meal, bacon and whiskey, and were waiting for the revenue officers to try to creep in on them from the mountains about. When they had seen the tetrahedral swoop down, they had immediately thought it a new method of the “revenuers,” and they believed the boys—too young to be officers—treacherous spies. So much Hike gathered from their threats and sneers. He saw that Poodle and he must either escape or be lynched. Poodle, who was looking around in a scared way at the scowling ring of men with ready rifles, was not too scared to whisper, “We’d better beat it. We’ll be late in getting to Washington you know, if we get lynched.” Hike had a plan. Addressing the leader, he explained that they had nothing to do with the revenue officers, and that he would prove it if the leader would step into the machine and examine their papers. Very suspicious, the leader refused to do more than approach. He demanded to see the papers outside. Hike leaned over a storage battery, and suddenly the leader stood as stiff as though he had been turned to marble. For the first time, Hike had used the Paralyzing Wave! It was an invention of Priest’s, by which a wave, thrown out from an electrical device, stiffened the victim at whom the wave was aimed, for several minutes.