“I’m going to drop something to mark the place,” said Julian, still keeping his eyes desperately on Tall Stone. “George, can you manage to watch Tall Stone and Steeple at the same time? I simply must look what I’m doing for the moment.”

“I’ll try,” said George, and fixed her eyes first on Tall Stone, then on Steeple, then on Tall Stone again, hoping and praying that neither would slip out of sight if the raft moved on the water.

Julian was busy. He had taken his torch and his pocket-knife out of his pocket and had tied them together with string. “I haven’t enough string, Dick,” he said. “You’ve got some, haven’t you?”

Dick had, of course. He put his hand into his pocket, still keeping his eyes on Tock Hill and passed his string over to Julian.

Julian tied it to the end of the string that joined together the knife and torch. Then he dropped them into the water, letting out the string as they went down with their weight. The string slid through his hands. It stopped in a short while and Julian knew that the knife and torch had reached the bed of the lake.

He felt in his pockets again. He knew he had a cork somewhere that he had carved into a horse’s head. He found it and tied the end of the string firmly round it. Then he dropped the cork thankfully into the water. It bobbed there, held by the string, which led right down to the knife and torch on the lake-bed below.

“It’s done!” he said, with a sigh of relief. “Take your eyes off everything! I’ve marked the place now, so we don’t need to glue our eyes on the four bearings!”

He told them how he had tied together his knife and torch and dropped them on string to the bottom of the lake, and then had tied a cork to the other end, so that it would bob and show them the place.

They all looked at it. “Jolly clever, Ju,” said Dick, “But once we slide away from this spot, and it would be an easy thing to do, we’d find it jolly difficult to find that cork again! Hadn’t we better tie something else to it?”

“I haven’t got anything else that will float,” said Julian, “Have you?”

’I have,’ said George, and she handed him a little wooden box. “I keep the threepenny bits I collect in that,” she said, putting the money into her pocket. “You can have the box. It will be much easier to see than the cork.”

Julian tied the box to the cork. It was certainly a good deal easier to see! “Fine!” he said. ‘Now we’re quite all right. We must be right over the loot!’

They all bent over the edge of the raft and looked down - and they saw a most surprising sight! Below them, resting on the bottom of the lake, was a boat! It lay there in the shadows of the water, its outline blurred by the ripples the raft made - but quite plainly it was a boat!