I think myself he meant some other word, but he was quite positive.
So then we got a sheet off Oswald's bed, and we all took our shoes and stockings off, and we tried to see if the sheet would drag the bottom of the moat, which is shallow at that end.

But it would keep floating on the top of the water, and when we tried sewing stones into one end of it, it stuck on something in the bottom, and when we got it up it was torn.

We were very sorry, and the sheet was in an awful mess; but the girls said they were sure they could wash it in the basin in their room, and we thought as we had torn it anyway, we might as well go on.

That washing never came off.
'No human being,' Noel said, 'knows half the treasures hidden in this dark tarn.' And we decided we would drag a bit more at that end, and work gradually round to under the dairy window where the milk-pan was.

We could not see that part very well, because of the bushes that grow between the cracks of the stones where the house goes down into the moat.