Praiseworthy is the novel’s main protagonist, an English butler who’s managed Arabella Flagg’s mansion for many years. Loyal, honest, and modest, he is, according to Arabella, “the finest English butler in Boston” (4); it is later revealed that her love for him may also play a role in her high opinion. Praiseworthy is such a paragon of his calling that no one, not even Jack, seems to know his full name.

Praiseworthy has the most significant arc in the novel, and proves to be its most complex character. He begins as a fairly unassuming servant, with no desire to be anything other than what he was raised and trained to be: a butler from a long line of butlers. Family tradition, and the rules of his trade, are important to him, and central to his self-control. Another important element of his trade is his conservative dress code: his bowler hat, black umbrella and coat, and white gloves, all quintessentially English. It becomes clear that this uniform has not been imposed on him by his employer (Arabella) or functionality, but tradition. Praiseworthy’s uniform is his armor: a reminder of who he is and what his role is in life. Whenever Praiseworthy loses a part of his uniform, he strays further from his traditional customs and demeanor. During his adventure with Jack, and especially in the wilds of California, he finds new ways of being, and eventually abandons the role of butler altogether.

It’s strongly hinted that, had Praiseworthy not gone to California with Jack, he might have continued in his traditional role. However, the challenges of the voyage, its many dangers and pleasures, push him out of his comfort zone, showing him that he’s capable of more than his current trade. The American West, at the time, was a crucible of opportunity and self-invention, and thousands who went West—many with no plans of staying longer than they needed to find gold—fell in love with the new lifestyle and stayed.  

The fact that Praiseworthy agreed to leave his employer’s house in the first place reveals something else about him. His keeping a portrait of Arabella close to his heart is the reader’s first hint that he feels something other than professional loyalty toward his employer. He is very much in love with her, and will risk anything to save her from bankruptcy. Jack witnesses a break in Praiseworthy’s calm for the first time when a highwayman tries to steal Arabella’s portrait, whereupon the butler reacts with a savage punch. The nickname this blow wins for him (“Bullwhip”) signals his shift in persona.

Tested by the dangers of the Gold Rush, Praiseworthy discovers many new things about himself, many of which point toward a more interesting life than that in Boston. He discovers gifts for detective work, oratory, and boxing among other things. He also learns, at long last, to openly show his fatherly affection for Jack, who’s always regarded him as more than a butler. Upon learning that Arabella sold her ancestral home, and left behind the rigid class structures it embodies, to move West, he proposes to her. As he steps into his new role as father to the children he once served, and looks to study law, Praiseworthy’s break with his old life is complete.

The slippery Cut-Eye Higgins, the novel’s main antagonist, is an impostor and thief, whom the heroes first encounter on the Lady Wilma, where he pretends to be a judge. His nickname alludes to a scar over his eye, which he claims to be a “dueling scar,” implying a brave, perhaps aristocratic, background for himself. But judging by his true character, he probably got it in a brawl while stealing someone’s property.

Cut-Eye’s thievery creates the first of many crises that jeopardize Jack and Praiseworthy’s voyage, when he steals their savings before they can buy tickets. He is superstitious, and Praiseworthy is able to reveal his criminality with a stratagem involving a supposedly prescient pig. Forced by Captain Swain to work as a stoker in the engine room, Cut-Eye eventually steals a map of the goldfields from another passenger and escapes in a lifeboat.  

On the stagecoach to Hangtown, Cut-Eye shows up in the guise of a dentist, and lies to the heroes about the whereabouts of the stolen map. In Shirt-Tail Camp, where he’s been using dentistry as a cover for petty thievery, he makes the mistake of stealing something valuable (a horse) and is sentenced to be hanged. Through oratory and trickery, Praiseworthy delays the execution in exchange for Cut-Eye’s stolen map—only to find that Cut-Eye has cheated him again: The map is useless. Still, Cut-Eye’s schemes do yield some good: It is digging his grave that yields Jack and Praiseworthy gold. When Cut-Eye escapes again by using his dental tools to pull the nails out of his jail cell, Praiseworthy believes “He’s just running from one noose to another” (183).

Joshua Swain, known to his crew as “the wild bull of the seas,” is the captain of the Lady Wilma, the sidewheeler ship that takes Jack and Praiseworthy around the continent to San Francisco. Upon meeting him, Jack can’t tell “whether he was a good man in a bad temper, or a bad man in a good temper” (7), but Captain Swain conceals a tender heart under his fearsome exterior. Though Jack and Praiseworthy are confessed stowaways, Captain Swain grants them the opportunity to recover their stolen money, by gathering the ship’s passengers together in a dark room for an unusual stratagem. Later, he saves a stranded square-rigger, even though this act of mercy will put the Lady Wilma far behind in its high-stakes race with the Sea Raven, a rival ship. In this, he stands in stark contrast to the captain of the Sea Raven, who ignored the square-rigger’s pleas for help.

However, Captain Swain is not above duplicitousness and ruthlessness, which he shows by diverting the ship’s route through the treacherous Strait of Magellan, without informing the passengers. He does this to shave hundreds of miles off the trip, to make up the lost time in his race with the Sea Raven; his peerless seamanship succeeds in pulling into the lead.