Quotation from: Tales of the Fish Patrol

Written by: Jack London

"Good luck be with you, boys," he said at parting, two days later.
"Remember, they are dangerous men, so be careful."

Nicholas and I succeeded in chartering the sloop very cheaply; and
between laughs, while getting up sail, we agreed that she was even
crazier and older than she had been described. She was a big,
flat-bottomed, square-sterned craft, sloop-rigged, with a sprung
mast, slack rigging, dilapidated sails, and rotten running-gear,
clumsy to handle and uncertain in bringing about, and she smelled
vilely of coal tar, with which strange stuff she had been smeared
from stem to stern and from cabin-roof to centreboard. And to cap
it all, Coal Tar Maggie was printed in great white letters the
whole length of either side.