craft down to Asparagus Island and join the oyster pirates' fleet.
Here, according to Nicholas's description of the beds and the
manner of raiding, it was possible for us to catch the pirates in
the act of stealing oysters, and at the same time to get them in
our power. Charley was to be on the shore, with Mr. Taft's
watchmen and a posse of constables, to help us at the right time.

"I know just the boat," Neil said, at the conclusion of the
discussion, "a crazy old sloop that's lying over at Tiburon. You
and Nicholas can go over by the ferry, charter it for a song, and
sail direct for the beds."

"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.

It was an uneventful though laughable run from Tiburon to Asparagus
Island, where we arrived in the afternoon of the following day.
The oyster pirates, a fleet of a dozen sloops, were lying at anchor
on what was known as the "Deserted Beds." The Coal Tar Maggie came