The moments preceding this were somewhere between terrifying and bracing, depending on how one feels about pirates (dispatched) and storms (lingering). For their charges, definitely terrifying. The Chantry personnel they were sent to escort vanished below well before they were boarded, where they presumably remain, protecting their cargo. But the crew mostly did not vanish, and our INTREPID HEROES entirely did not.

—a few of the crew might have vanished into the water. There will have to be a headcount, later, when Marcoulf has removed the squid from his face, and Val has not been lightly stabbed, and Jehan is not tangled in ropes and suspended sideways slightly above the deck, and Freddie is not—wherever Freddie is.

(Freddie is very nearly, but not entirely, overboard.)

"Are we alive?" Jehan asks, very loudly, trying to be heard over the wind.