Bucephalus was fond of using big words, but did not always use them in the most appropriate manner, so that the boys were always kept guessing as to what he was next going to say when excited.

The boys nearest the rail seized Jack and young Smith as they came on deck, and bore them in triumph to the cabin.

“Bully for Jack Sheldon!” shouted Harry, and fifty boys gave him the heartiest kind of a cheer.

“That’s some nerve he showed,” declared Arthur Warren, “but then, he always did have nerve, Jack did.  If he didn’t he wouldn’t have done the things he has.”

“H’m! anybody could do that,” said Herring with a snarl.  “The yacht was close to him all the time.  You fellows are all the time cracking up Jack Sheldon, but I don’t see that he is any great shakes.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” said Billy Manners, with an emphasis on the pronoun, “but decent fellows can see it.  Would you have gone over after young Smith?”

“There wasn’t any need to do it,” growled Herring.  “If I’d seen him first I’d have done it.”

“You saw it as soon as any one except Jack himself, and you were nearer the deck,” said Percival, who came up in time to hear what Herring had said.  “I heard you say that Jack pushed the boy overboard so as to get the name of rescuing him.  You know that this is a lie, because Jack was on the bridge at that time, and could not have done it.  Jack and I both saw young Jesse W. go overboard.  Jack feared he might, and had started to go to the deck when the thing happened.”

Herring did not care to get into a quarrel with Percival, who was much stronger and better built than himself, and he, therefore, went away muttering something which the boys could not make out.

“He is always saying something nasty against Jack,” declared Arthur.  “He hates Jack because Jack is smarter, and a general favorite.  I wish he had stayed on shore, but as Mr. Smith invited the whole Academy he could not very well be left behind.”

“He ought to be marooned on some solitary, uninhabited island, and left there to hate himself,” chuckled Billy Manners.

“They don’t do those things nowadays, Billy,” said Percival.  “You have been reading the lives of the pirates, and are full of that sort of romantic stuff.”

“Maybe I am,” chuckled Billy good naturedly, “but here come Jack and young Jesse W., looking as fine as fiddles, and not a bit worse for their baths.  Whoop it up for them, boys!”

Every boy in sight responded to the summons, and gave both boys the heartiest cheers, both Jack and his young companion being favorites.

CHAPTER III

THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

Neither Jack nor young Smith felt any the worse for his tumble into the warm waters of the Caribbean, and after they had changed their clothes they went on deck to assure their schoolmates that they were all right, and suffering no inconvenience from their trip overboard.