Ambush!
“We had run afoul of a sudden squall,” Amos went on. “The captain, God rest her soul, knew these waters well enough to navigate the channel into the Bay, but we took some damage in the dark, and lost most of the water stores. She sent me and most of the crew to the island to find a spring for refilling our barrels. If only we had just tried to reach Newport, instead! We could have stretched out the water for that long.”
“Cursed Jersey’s no place to sail with sprung barrels,” Jack told him. “I’d have looked for water, myself.”
Amos shuddered. “Well, we found some. It saved our lives, too. Just not how we reckoned it would. While we were filling from a spring on the island, those damned beasts woke up and swarmed the Emancipation! They can hop on the water, you see. Hop on the water, and jump right up the anchor chain…
“We heard the fighting as we returned. When we saw what those things were starting to do to the crew still left aboard, we rowed like the damned, but everybody was dead by the time we came alongside, including the captain.
“Then it was our turn to be savaged.”