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Williams did not enter Pulotu bay. He landed through the surf on the other side of the narrow island, about a mile below the slope where Waller had built his house.
McGuire had never been so miserable on a voyage as on this one, but he had only increased misery by the way it ended; and all because of John Paullen.
"What of him?" Williams had demanded, with the merest jerk of a thumb, toward Paullen in the dawn of the first morning out of San Francisco. He had been watching Paullen. The boy then stood amidships, with something of the loneliness in his face that the landsman feels when he sees the shore-line vanishing for the first time.
"West Point, skipper. Kicked out—head first. Family chopped him off. Oo-ey—git! Just that way, like a stray dog. Father told him to take some other name. Just what he did I don't know—yet. But you see for yourself, skipper, he's the sort that wouldn't cheat at cards, steal a horse, hurt a woman. He must have thrown a book at a teacher. Well, he was on the waterfront without a friend or a dollar. Hell-ward bound in any case. I thought he might as well come along with us."