Prequal to The Golden Compass

Lyra ducked behind the box. She looked around at the scrambling kids from Jordan and St. Michael's College. Where was Roger? He was with the kids that were supposed to be throwing the mud at the boat. She spotted him. He was with a bunch of kids from St. Michael's College. It was kind of hard to see Roger since he was on the shorter side. They were covering the boat in mud.
All of a sudden the door to the cabin opened and a gyptain man walked out and started yelling at the kids that were throwing the mud. Lyra ducked down again, not wanting to be seen until the whole family left the boat. A woman and two kids appeared at the doorway. They came off of the boat and started chasing the kids around. Now was the time that Lyra needed to signal to the other kids to scramble onto the boat.
Lyra whistled as loudly as she could and as she looked around, she saw six other heads pop up from behind boxes. They looked at her eagerly. She moved hand in a way as to signal that they should move. All seven of them darted to the canal boat. Jack untied the boat from the dock and hopped in after he pushed the boat away from the shore. Michael steered the boat so it wouldn't hit anything while the others searched for the bung.
Lyra kept insisting that it had to be somewhere. If they could just find it, she kept declaring that the boat would sink for sure. Everyone was throwing things off the shelves and looking under the carpet, but they couldn't find it.
The other six children gave up after ten minutes of searching. Now the gyptians were yelling at them to come back with their boat. Lyra didn't want to give up but they had looked throughout the whole boat and had found nothing that even resembled a bung.
She shouted to Michael to turn the boat around and head back to the dock. He nodded his head. When they arrived to the shore, all seven kids jumped out of the boat and ran away before the gyptians could say anything to them.