"You have done right, yes," said Jack slowly, weighing each word, "if you are sure you can trust our Captain Jack, here."
Captain Jack was on his feet with an angry gleam in his eyes, but Jack did not quail. Before the look in the young Englishman's eye, the pirate chief stepped back. Then he looked the lad squarely in the face and extended his hand.
"You've my word that I will play square," he said quietly, and added half ruefully, "The word of a pirate!"
"I accept it!" said Jack, and grasped the hand.
CHAPTER XX
THE ATTACK
Jack now explained to the others how he and his two companions had encountered the pirate forces in the forest.
"So after I fired at the treacherous pirate," he concluded, "we framed up an agreement to come along with those able to walk. It's true we held the upper hand at that moment, but we were strangers in a strange land, so to speak, and we needed help. Besides, the man didn't explain that they were pirates."
The attack upon the German raider was set for the next night when a messenger from the wireless station in the woods apprised Captain Jack of the approximate hour at which the German ship would pass a certain point.
That night the friends spent aboard the submarine at the bottom of the harbor. The fact that the vessel submerged with the coming of darkness accounted for its sudden appearance from nowhere the morning the castaways landed.