I do not believe that Kino was acting out of selflessness whatsoever in the Pearl. He was trying to sell the pearl in order to benefit himself and his family. Kino set out with no intent to hurt anyone, simply to sell something that would bring greater wealth to his family, and even though he was helping his wife and son as well as himself, he seemed somewhat uninterested in the well-being of others. He may not have cared if his child could attend school, if he wasn't his child, who's happiness and success would be directly linked to his own. Kino had no plans to use his potential profit to start a charity for those who he wasn't obliged to support, at least the book never mentioned such. Although Kino had no negative aspirations or any premonitions of what was to come, his quest for "good" ended very badly. It seems everyone involved in the story would have been better off if Kino had never found the pearl. I sensed that Kino came to this realisation as they returned to thier village, resulting in his disowning of the pearl, even though Juana pressured him to di it beforehand. At times in the story, we also started to see a darker (evil???) side to Kino caused by his aspirations revolving the pearl.
I think the pearl is an example of a story where the protagonist is unable to fullfill his aspirations rendering the sacrifices made on the journey unnecessary. A journey where the hero would have been better off never accepting his call to adventure, even if he didn't know how bad it would end up at the time of the call. Throughout every journey evil is faced, in some cases evil even emerges, but in most ficticious journeys more good than evil is created in the end. Kino never found the good he was chasing, instead only receiving the horrible with no reward (his baby died for what was ultimately nothing!). All of the sacrifices they made were in vain as nothing good came out of thier quest for potential good.
Going back to what I mentionned near the beggining of the post, even though I don't believe that Kino and Juana acted out of selflessness, I persoanally believe that acting selflessly (whilst also respecting yourself) is true virtue. I see helping others solely to get something in return as manipulation, but doing it out of true compassion for that person is true inner virtue. It is very difficult for anybody but you to understand your motives, but to me virtue goes beyond doing good deeds and is directly linked to a person's drive to do them. Virtue is complex and difficult to identify. Buying a burger for someone so it increases your chance of cheating off them on school work, is not true virtue, even if it had cheese! Running into the World Trade Centre on 9/11 to save people they'd never even met, knowing full-well that they'd be risking thier lives doing so expressed true virtue on the part of the 9/11 firefighters.
Were the protagonists virtuous on thier journey in "The Pearl"? According to my own definition of virtue, I would probably place them in somewhat of a gray area, leaning slightly towards "No".
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