"Come and look at this again, Newpenny," he called. "I think I'm beginning to know what it means. Look! You can see the wavy rivers running round Rye? And the straight black lines must be the roads... You can see the kink in that crazy road between Rye and Winchelsea, can't you?... You know! The road that seems to be going away from Winchelsea all the time. The road where I tried to find a short-cut... Then, I think the dotted lines must be the tracks used by the smugglers. I can't think what else they could be. They're not boundaries."

"If you are right, Jon, I wonder why they don't show the dikes, because it would be the dikes that would be such a danger at night?"

"They couldn't on a map this size. P'raps they used a compass? Anyway, we'd better explore all these tracks as far as we can in the holidays and see if we can find any other clue which suggests 'earthen vessels', but it will be a big job and we'll start near home this morning... But there are one or two things we didn't spot before, Penny... First, I think there's a gallows or gibbet, or whatever you call it, on a little hill down by Camber Sands, and I should think that would be a good place to hide treasure------"

"Do you m-m-m-mean we'd have to dig all among the mouldering bones for it, Jon?"

"Well, we might. We've got to search everywhere, haven't we? .. Now look again, Penny, and you'll see that all the landmarks specially marked are linked by the dotted tracks and that most of these are all round this district. See how four tracks meet at Camber Castle. Then the two windmills are specially drawn in and, now I come to look at it again, the mill at Winchelsea seems to be the only place of importance there... Then there's that miniature volcano-looking thing right on the coast south of Winchelsea. I should think that's the hill near the Ballinger's bungalow, and I'm sure we ought to look at that... Then there's the inn down on the coast there, too. The track finishes there, so I think that inn was important. I'll tell you what we'll do today. I want to see the old harbour, so let's go to Camber Sands by the river and walk back along the coast to that little hill at Winchelsea Beach. I expect there's a bridge or a ferry over the mouth of the river... There's Fred! Let's ask him."

"Yes," Fred told them. "There's a ferry right enough. He's never side you want him, but you've only got to holler for him and he'll come over... Don't be forgetting the visitors 'ull be here time you're back, Master Jonathan, and you won't go banging about in the lounge, will you?"