He notes the barely-there wince, and the continuance despite it. The light in Paul's eyes gets him to crook a smile.

"Sea serpents don't worry me," he says, as though mulling it over, "and I have hands to spare."

Puppets; corpses. They're limited by his knowledge of the sea, which amounts to very little. It would have been smarter to snag the souls with the bodies, but he'd been in, admittedly, a bit of a mood when he'd arrived.

He also has the gaggle of over-serious teenagers, which now apparently includes one more.

"I could use a navigator."