‘Just the ticket.’ Connor took the half bucket, one side of which had been squeezed into a pouring lip, and began to fill the pipe through a plug hole in the line. ‘It’s called priming,’ he explained. ‘The pump impeller thrusts the water up the pipe, which creates a vacuum, which sucks at the valve to draw more water in. There.’ He screwed the plug home, jumped back to the bank and gave the raft a push with his foot. ‘You can start it up now.’

Tilly did so and heard the almost immediate rush and gurgle of moving water. ‘Thank you, Connor.’ She spoke with heartfelt relief. ‘I’ll remember that next time it happens.’ She eyed the container as if it contained a nest of spiders. ‘Are you going to open that?’

‘Sure am. We’ll take it up to my camp. But first, let’s see where the other end of the thing goes.’

It took just a moment to learn that the rope was tethered to a dee ring bolted to the end of a steel fencepost, which had been driven full length into the mud of the bank about a metre from where the pump raft was tethered. The length of steel had been pounded out of sight, the result being that the end of the rope was also buried.

‘Not meant to be turned up by accident,’ Connor mused. ‘But nobody comes down here, do they?’

‘They’re not supposed to,’ Tilly agreed. ‘The path is fenced off, as you’d have seen, and there’s a No trespassing sign on the shed. So it’s really only us.’

‘And Matt’s responsible for the pump?’ Connor used a pocket knife to tease open the knot securing the canister.

‘We all take turns starting it, but yes, he services it, puts it in, takes it out for the Wet.’

‘So it’s a fair bet that this is his work.’ He tapped the plastic drum, which gave back a heavy, dull sound as if it were full of water, then shortened the rope by a metre and began shredding the cut end with the knife.

‘What are you doing?’

‘A precaution,’ Connor grunted, straining at the tough strands, ‘against him finding it gone. Don’t want to spook him into doing a runner. There – you reckon a croc might’ve done that, or a boat’s propeller?’

‘Umm.’ Tilly pounced on the inference. ‘You think, whatever it is, it’s dodgy?’

‘Know any other reason for it to be there?’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go back and find out.’

At his camp he wiped mud off the drum and fetched what looked like an extremely sharp blade from his tent. ‘Fishing knife,’ he explained as Tilly eyed it from her seat under the flyrig. ‘I don’t think my pen knife’ll cut it. No pun intended.’