The chief smiled in response.
"You turned the tables on us very neatly that time, Roger," he said, "and you really had me badly worried, because, as you know yourself, these swamps are not a good place to get lost in. I reckon, from what you've told me, that if you had walked heedlessly on into that quag without trying to test it step by step, you would still be there, only at the bottom instead of the top."
"I really believe I would," answered the boy seriously.
"If you stick to the Survey," went on Field, "and come to be the head of a party, particularly in wild country, you will see how necessary it is to do just what you're told instead of trying to run the thing your own way. If you follow instructions and anything goes wrong, then the fault belongs to the head of the party, who is supposed to have enough judgment and experience to know what to do in an emergency. What could have been more simple than to go twenty or thirty yards farther away than you had been told, just as you did, for instance, and yet, if you had not been lucky, you would have disappeared forever in that quagmire and by your death spoiled our record."
"Have many lives been lost in Survey work?" asked Roger.
"In the nearly thirty years of the existence of the Geological Survey, as a separate branch of the Department of the Interior," replied Field, "during which time explorations of the most extreme peril have been undertaken, only one life has been lost. Really, when you come to consider how much of the work has been done in lands absolutely unknown, and that thousands of miles of territory have been covered wherein a white man had never before set his foot, this is nothing short of astounding."
"But if sickness should strike a camp?" queried the boy.
"Hard work, clean living, good judgment, and the open air, are worth all the drugs we know about and a whole lot more that we don't. Of course a small chest of certain radical remedies accompanies each party, with quinine and things like that, but it is seldom that it is opened."
"But how about accidents, Mr. Field?"
"Such as?"