The Boy With the U. S. Survey

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

Limping back over the ridge of ground, his ankle growing sorer each step, Roger painfully wended his way to the little lake. He found the ridge, but in returning it appeared to divide into twain paths, and for a moment his heart sank within him; as luck would have it, however, he remembered seeing a tree that had been struck by lightning somewhere about where he then was, and he determined to go along each of the paths until he struck the tree. Taking the left hand, at random, he hobbled along for half an hour, but seeing no blighted tree, retraced his way and took the other path. Just as he was about to give up that route also, in despair, the sentinel tree on which he had been building loomed up before him. It was the first sure sign that he was on the right trail, and Roger let out a boyish whoop of delight. Suddenly he thought he heard an answering yell, and he called again, but there being no answer he felt that his ears had deceived him. Soon he came to the banks of the little shallow lake, and struck in to wade across.

Photograph by U.S.G.S.

A Tangle of Swamp.

Conditions which must be overcome by topographic parties, though "too wet for walking, too dense for boats."

It then became evident to the boy that he had entered the lake at a different point, for while it had been a little over his knees at the deepest part before, now it came to his thighs and was steadily deepening. In the middle the water was almost to his waist and the boy began to be alarmed concerning the contents of his pack, which he had stuck to throughout despite the pain in his foot. But while the water came to within six inches of the pack at one place, the bottom remained fairly hard, and presently it shallowed rapidly and Roger stood upon the farther shore.

This time, however, the luck which seemed to have deserted him so long, returned, for he found himself, in the course of a few steps, just at the place where the brushwood had been cut recently for the making of a sight, and the boy knew that he could not now be very far from the rest of the party. He followed the blazed trail as rapidly as his somewhat crippled condition would permit, shouting occasionally as he did so, when suddenly he heard voices. Stopping to make sure, and hearing speech quite distinctly, he hurried on, coming at last to a dense dark piece of the wood through which a path had been hewn with some difficulty. Another two minutes, he was assured, would bring him among his comrades, when he heard the voices again, and what they said made him pause.

"It's a good one on the boy," said one of the voices.

Roger knew that he was always spoken of in camp as "the boy," and he thought if they were planning some practical joke on him, like the "snipe shoot," over which they had never ceased to tease him, there could be nothing wrong in listening so that he could checkmate it.