"Well part of the goal is to keep spunk out of me," Emmaline responded tartly. Morgan, who was taking a slug of from a battered leather flask, choked and then sprayed a mist of what was clearly rum across one of the guns. Markus arched an eyebrow and seemed about to comment when a shout carried down from the deck.

"Captain she's altering course!"

Markus shot Emmaline a look and then turned and trotted up the companionway onto the deck. Lacking any other useful occupation, and aware that Markus' presence was a better shield than bludgeoning Brod with a soup ladle would be if that worthy decided to take advantage of the ships distraction by a strange sail, Emmaline followed ducking her head to avoid braining herself on one of the crossbeams.

Whatever Emmaline had expected to see she was disappointed. The sloop, she hadn't yet been told its name, was heeled over to the wind, the deck slanting more noticeably by the minute. The chopping sea slapped against the side of the hull as the brisk south easterly wind filled the billowing sails. Markus' crew was busy, a dozen men were aloft, shaking out an additional sail from a yard, scampering out over yard arms along the guy ropes. A lithe looking younger man in a loose white shirt slid down a line to land barefoot on the deck before his captain. Like most of the rest of the sailors he was barefoot and sported prodigious callouses. An expensive looking spyglass, clashing incongruously with his ragged clothes, was clutched in his right fist. 

"She's rigged like a Brettonian caravel, all squaresails and stunsails," the lookout reported. He was a handsome man in a boyish way, but his voice sounded like a weasel in the process of dying of consumption.

"Something is wrong though," the lookout went on, clearly realizing his captain was waiting for more information. Emmaline glanced out in the direction in which the lookout was enthusiastically gesticulating. For a moment all she could see was open water, but after a moment she thought she could make out a pale splotch on the horizon, something she would have dismissed as a whisp of cloud under normal circumstances.

"She altered course three points nor'west a minute ago, just about the time our sails would have been visible over the horizon," he finished breathily. Markus scowled his face suspicious and his gaze locked on the horizon before flicking up towards the fighting tops. Emmaline didn't understand why that was unusual, but it clearly struck the pirates as such.

"Nor'west," Markus muttered, turning to view the snapping pennant flag that flew from the rearmost mask, judging the wind direction. 

"Taking a look at us, bold of 'em," Morgan opined, his voice still harsh with the rum he had ejected a few moments before. Emmaline, who through the winds of magic, was better attuned to magnetic north than anyone else present, thought she understood. The ship, whatever it was, had been running northerly with a following wind. When it had caught a glimpse of a sail on the horizon, it had turned into a less favorable breeze, deliberately slowing itself so it could take a look at the new comer while she was still far distant.