Chapter 2

While Annie and Stacy were making salads and sandwiches for a snack, I had to try one more small experiment. I placed both the mirrors side by side, facing the same way as we originally had the first one.

I held the sides of the mirror my mom had left me and leaned in for a look. There was the beach, I looked to my left and saw the clear blue waters also. I looked out to sea and saw a big, twin masted sailing vessel offshore about two hundred yards. The sails were lowered and two skiffs were already in the water with oars locked.

Pirates!

I wanted to see this, without being seen. I looked around for some way to do this. I got my digital camera, a wooden yardstick, and some duct tape. Good old duct tape.

I placed the yardstick across the top part of the oval, about six inches from the top and taped the ends to the back of the mirror frame to keep from damaging the wood finish when I removed the tape. I placed the camera on top of the yardstick and sure enough, the lens protruded just inside the glass with the camera outside.

I turned the video on and watched the screen for a while as the skiffs neared shore just a few yards south of where we were lying on the beach earlier.

I went into the kitchen where Annie and Stacy were finishing up at the table and told them what I had seen and done to record it. They both ran to the bathroom to see.

“I’ll be right back,” Annie said, and went back to the kitchen.

She returned with a serving tray with our food on it and we sat on the bench stool, with me in the middle and each of them turned to sit on the ends. We watched the small LCD screen as the pirates pulled the skiffs ashore and beached the front of the boat in the sand. They ran up the beach, looking in all directions, speaking in some dialect of Spanish and they, we agreed, were actually Spaniards.

They soon were all back to the side of one skiff, and with four men in the boat and the other eight standing in the shallow surf, they lifted a huge trunk over the side, letting it down into the water. Then they all gathered around the trunk as if carrying a small coffin and carried it over to the tree line.

They went back three more times and carried similar trunks over to the tree line, then brought back short, wide shovels to start digging.

“They are actually burying a pirate’s chest, aren’t they?” Stacy said.

“Yes, I wonder why and I wonder what’s in those trunks?” Annie said.

“I wonder if this is a small uninhabited island where they come to bury their loot, then come back later and gather it up. There may be even more buried treasure here if, in fact, they are burying some sort of pirate booty,” I said, as we watched the men bury the four large chest type trunks.

“Hey, Dad, I bet you’re right. You still have those metal detectors don’t you?” Annie asked, smiling.

“I sure do and I’ve already charged the batteries in both of them for us to take on our trip. We may just do a little treasure hunting here before we leave on our road trip.”

I had recently invested in two really high powered ‘White’ brand, TDI metal detectors, and this would really test them. They were supposed to be among the best on the market for finding gold nuggets and coins.

“Whatever is in all those trunks, it took eight men to carry one. That tells me it most likely has to be gold or silver,” Stacy said.

“I agree, I don’t know of anything other than cannon balls that would weigh that much, and you can bet your booty they weren’t burying cannon balls,” I told them.

We sat there in the bathroom, eating our sandwiches and salads, and drinking beer. We watched as the men buried the chests and smoothed the sand. After the sand was patted down, they raked it over with palm fronds. Two stayed back, and as soon as the others had made it to the two skiffs, the two gathered up the palm fronds and wiped the tracks once more, this time all the way to the surf, where they dropped the palm fronds and stepped into the skiffs.

When we pointed the camera lens back to focus in on the ship, the sails were once more being raised and the crew was awaiting the skiffs to pull alongside to be raised as well.

“I’d say we have a good hour, maybe more, before we can go back to the beach. It’ll take them that long to get that ship turned to the wind and moving away. Let’s get our clothes carried out to the RV and put away, then we’ll come back and make sure there’s no one left behind. If not, we’ll take the metal detectors and shovels and go treasure hunting,” I said, and we all laughed. This was about to get really exciting. If in fact the pirates did indeed bury gold bullion or even gold coins, we’d relieve them of their spoils.

We each packed our clothes away, they having to carry out more than I, simply because they hardly ever went out on the road with me. We were all looking forward to this summer, and have been since they knew they were going to have this time off.

When we went back to check the scene on the beach once again, we saw the ship sailing away. With sails billowing in the wind and becoming smaller and smaller on the horizon, we felt safe.

We gathered our weapons and the metal detectors to lay them on the floor by the mirror. I had three short garden shovels with sharp points, there too. I had grabbed a long crowbar from my tool storage, just in case we needed to pry the locks off.

I threw the coiled rope through the mirror glass and we went in. Me first so I could check out the beach and the horizon. I took binoculars this time so we could occasionally stop and scan the horizon, just to be alerted if in fact that ship, or another, came back.

When we came to the place where they had just buried the four trunks, we made short work of uncovering the first one. We had to dig a wider hole than they did, to get to the big antique lock that was hooked through the hasp.

I was working on the lock when Annie grabbed a metal detector and walked along the tree line scanning for what we hoped would be more hidden treasure. She yelled and lay a coconut over a spot, then walked slowly a few feet and yelled again. This could really get interesting.

I had the lock off, and Annie came running back to see what was in the old trunk. When I raised the lid, we all just stood and stared at the contents.

“Dad, what if I moved the mirror right over to where we could just lift the gold coins right into the floor of the bathroom?” Stacy asked.

“That’s a great idea, Stacy. I’ll help you guide it, if you’ll get in there and slide it slowly this way.”

She stepped through the portal into the bathroom and slid the mirror right to our loot.

I put my hand back through the portal by the rope and held it up, she stopped with our portal right above the trunk, not two feet above the sand.

I hefted one of the gold coins and knew they weighed close to two ounces each, at least. I started scooping hands full of them and lifting them into the portal. I used the rope as a guide, letting them drop inside on the bathroom floor. I was only able to grip a dozen or so of the big coins at a time in both hands and get them up through the portal, before losing them.

Stacy and Annie came and stood on each side of the trunk and scooped coins into the bathroom until we were close to halfway down through the huge trunk. I had no idea how many coins, or how much they would be worth on today’s market, but I knew it would be many millions, just in the four trunks alone.

We kept swapping up, as each of us became tired of lifting all the gold up and into the room, finally getting the first trunk empty. As soon as it was empty, I took my shovel and filled the trunk with sand. I was hoping that would fool whoever came back for it, thinking the gold was still inside.

When I pried the lock apart, I had just pulled the lock hasp out of the body, stripping the keepers out as it came. I lined the point of the hasp and tapped it right back into the hole. I knew it wasn’t locked, but at least it was closed.

I was sure it was just a single tumbler lock, as simple as it looked and was trying to think of something I might use to put in the keyhole of the others and make the tumbler open without prying the lock apart.

I thought of a set of hex wrenches I had, that graduated up to a size that may just work. While they uncovered the next trunk and covered the first one with that sand, I went inside to get the tools I hoped would work.

I was amazed at the big pile of gold coins piled in the bathroom floor, wondering just what we were going to do with all of this, and where were we going to put it.

I got my hex wrench set and picked up a small vise grip to clip on the long end of the hex wrench to turn it.

When I went back through the portal again, I took the binoculars and scanned the horizon, then up and down the long beach in each direction. Satisfied there was no one close by, I started trying to pick the lock on the second trunk, as the girls uncovered the third one, piling the sand in the opposite direction.

The hex wrench I chose first was way too big and wouldn’t even go in the keyhole, then I got the next size smaller and the short end was too long to turn far enough to roll the tumbler. I was about to give up, when I picked up a smaller hex wrench and tried it, with the vise grips clamped to the long end. The tumbler rolled over and the hasp swung out to open the lock.

Annie and Stacy were clapping and laughing at me picking this ancient padlock.

Stacy went in once more and moved the mirror closer to the trunk we were now working on. We worked hard until nearly dark here on the beach, but we finally got the four trunks emptied. We covered them and smoothed the sand, erasing all our footprints and evidence of being here.

The tide was coming in as we finished, we knew that our prints would be washed out, just as the hard tropical rain earlier had washed our other tracks out, luckily for us.

I leaned back through the portal for one last look and was satisfied that we had stolen the pirates’ booty and there was no evidence of us ever being there. I was even more excited about all the ‘hits’ Annie had discovered as she walked down the tree line with the metal detector. Just how many more treasure chests were buried here?

I stood and looked at the huge pile of old gold coins scattered almost all the way across the big bathroom, there were at least three sizes that I saw. I knew nothing about old Spanish gold coins, but I bet we were about to get some good lessons.

When I went to the den, Annie and Stacy were sitting, drinking a beer. They were tired and I was too, we still had a pile of gold in the bathroom to dispose of and more on the beach to uncover.

“We need to devise a better way of bringing the gold up and then storing it somewhere safe,” I said, as I sat down with my beer.

“Dad, what if we took both mirrors down to the basement? Then put them side by side, we could all put the gold coins and whatever else we found, right on the basement floor,” Annie said, as she looked at me.

“Yeah, Dad, then we could get your chain hoist and hang it from the overhead beams and use it to pull heavier loads up through the portal, faster and easier,” Stacy added.

“Damn, you girls are about to pay for your educations, that’s a hell of an idea,” I said, and we all grinned.

“How much would you guess we have so far, Dad?” Annie asked.

“I have no idea, but I was just thinking; with those gold coins in perfect condition and as old as they are, we must have at least a million, maybe more in each of the trunks.”

“I got four more hits on the metal detector, before I turned it off and helped put the gold inside. I wonder how many of those buried treasure chests there are,” Annie said.

“Look at it like this. I wonder how many ‘Treasure Islands’ there are,” Stacy added.

“I’ll go you one further, what if we all drove up to the Black Hills or out to Colorado? We could go back two hundred years and wade up some of those streams with the metal detectors? Not digging, just picking up nuggets,” I said, and we all grinned at the possibilities.

“Dad, that would work. We could go there in real time, then use the mirror to go back to a time before all the gold nuggets were even discovered in the streams. We’d just pick up a few hundred pounds and sell the gold on the current market,” Stacy added.

“Gold is over eighteen hundred dollars an ounce and I would guess we have over a thousand pounds in the bathroom. If we had a thousand pounds of nuggets, we’d have almost twenty nine million dollars in gold,” Annie said, as she did the math in her head.

“What would we do with all this gold and money, if we were to do this?” I asked, just to get their reaction.

“I’d want to start a charitable foundation for underprivileged youth. That’s what I wanted to do when I get my PhD and get a good paying job,” Annie said.

“I’d like to have something like that too. I want to help the children that can’t help themselves, maybe provide the means to get them educated and provide food and medicine for those that are oppressed,” Stacy added her thoughts.

“What if we were able to fine tune the time portals and somehow find a way to take out the dictators that are oppressing the populations, like in Africa, South America, and Asia?” I asked.

“Now we’re talking, Dad, we need to concentrate on that very thing, of course we’ll need money to work with, so maybe we can stop on our trip this summer and gather up a few million,” Annie laughed.

“I was wondering too; when we saw the ship leaving, is there a way we can watch them and see where they go? I wonder where they’re getting their booty. Maybe we can even stop them, unless they’re taking it from another pirate ship,” I told them.

“Now I love that. We could be Robin Hoods as we make our fortunes robbing the pirates, and even the drug cartels and dictators around the world, using the money to feed and provide medical needs to malnourished people all over,” Stacy said.

“I wonder if we can set the mirror in the direction the ship just sailed and catch them. They surely don’t sail over five or six knots an hour,” Annie asked.

“Let’s try it. We need to experiment with this anyway,” I told them.

We moved the mirror into the hallway, then carried it down into the basement. With a spotlight shining on the beach to keep our coordinates, we turned the mirror in the direction the ship had sailed.

I wasn’t a sailor, but I knew enough to know that a sailing vessel doesn’t always sail in a straight line. They have to tack a zigzag course according to the wind direction. It was worth a try and we’d have fun if, in fact, we did spot the ship, or any ship.

As they maneuvered the mirror, I stood with my binoculars to my eyes, scanning the horizon on the blue ocean waters. The sunlight was just about gone for the day.

We weren’t sure how much movement of the mirror resulted in how many miles or knots, but when we were loading the gold into the mirror, we only moved it an inch or so to get about ten feet or more. I wished now we had thought to measure all that. We’ll need to know.

“I see a ship,” I yelled, and tried to get a better view to be sure it was the same one.

“Now I see two ships, one looks like a freighter and one ship is pursuing it.”

“Is it the one that we saw earlier?” Annie asked, as she leaned in too.

“I never did see a name on that one, but I did see a naked lady on the prow,” I told her.

“Then we’ll just look for naked ladies until we find the one you want, Dad,” Stacy laughed, as she inched the mirror closer to the two ships.

“Hurry, that is the pirate ship we saw and its pulling up alongside the freighter. They’re going to try and disable the ship. Damn, I wish I knew what to do,” I yelled, just as the pirates fired two cannons, one hitting the base of the main mast, knocking it into the water like a falling tree.

Annie leaned back inside the mirror with me. She pointed her light to a large stash of wooden kegs that had to be black powder, stacked near the cannon balls that were contained by timbers against the hull of the ship.

“Stacy, we need to be lower, how do we get it to go down a few feet?” Annie asked.

“Step back and let me lay the mirror horizontal and see if that works,” she suggested.

It was better, but we were still too far above the ship. Stacy tilted the end of the mirror down now, and I was within reach of the kegs.

“Get a box of matches from the kitchen,” I told Annie, as I reached down and grabbed a keg of black powder. I pulled it into the bathroom, taking the crowbar and knocking a hole in the end. I put that one on the floor of the bathroom and reached in with the crowbar to knock the top out of three more kegs on the deck.

“Annie, please don’t light the match until I pour this powder over the stack of kegs, then light matches and as fast as you can, them throw at it. We don’t know what will happen when the powder blows, so we all need to fall back, just in case the blast comes through the portal.”

I poured the entire keg of black powder over the others, and as Annie threw the first match, we both fell backwards. We never heard an explosion or smelled the powder or saw smoke. We assumed the match went out. She and I both looked through the mirror once more, then we looked at each other and smiled. The whole side of the pirate ship was blown out, it was taking on water.

“Dad, look, they’re boarding the other ship now and there’s a young woman standing ready to jump overboard to keep from being captured. Stacy, turn us to the right just a little and forward a few inches!” Annie yelled.

I held the spotlight in one hand and swept the beam across the deck of the ship.

“Dad, if you can grab her arm, I can too and we’ll pull her through,” Annie was screaming, as the pirates were about to capture the young woman.

We never gave it another thought. She and I reached through, grabbing the young woman by her arms as she cursed, swung her fists, and kicked at the men trying to grab her.

She fought against us now, not knowing we were trying to save her. The pirate ship had collided with the side of the ship she was on. Both ships were afire.

I leaned in to my waist and grabbed her by her dress in back, as she turned to fight off the bearded, shirtless pirates, who were still trying to get her even though the ships were blazing.

I grabbed the back of her dress and felt it rip, but I had her arm now and Annie helped me pull her through the portal. The men grabbed at her legs, then pulled her dress completely off as they lost their grip when she kicked at them.

Both the ships were going down as we pulled her through the mirror into our basement. We weren’t sure we had done the right thing at first.

The young woman was Spanish. I heard some words in English as she ranted, cursed, and spewed like a banshee, pointing her fingers at each of us. None of us spoke as she kept looking around. She spotted the basement stairs and bolted for them. I stepped in front of her.

“Wait, tell us your name. Let us try to help you understand what has happened. Do you speak English enough to understand me?” I tried to talk to her.

“I was, I was... , I’m. You saved my life and I thank you,” she said, tears filling her eyes as she slumped to the floor.

“You’re more than welcome. Look through this and see what would have happened to you, had we not been at the right place at just the right moment in time,” I said, as I leaned into the glass. I leaned back into the room, pulling her hand and she followed me this time.

We watched as the two ships sank completely, only a few of the pirates were swimming to a large skiff that was not sinking.

“I thank you. I am Monica Concelia Surica-Montavani. I am on my way to my home in Valencia, Spain. I WAS on my way home. I have been schooled in Barcelona, London, and Macon, Georgia. Will you please tell me where I am at this time?”

“You are in the southern part of Texas, in the United States of America. I am Bryan Sandusky, these are my daughters, Annie and Stacy. The year is 2010.”

“I left Savannah, Georgia, on June 25^th, 1840. How can this be?” she asked.

Annie and Stacy smiled at her, she relented and smiled at them. Then she started to cry and, of course, the girls consoled and comforted her.

Somehow, though there was one hundred and seventy years between our time lines, they were able to communicate with her and get her to agree to take a bath and let them help her. She realized that the ship she WAS on is now at the bottom of some sea and that she is safe here, even if she doesn’t know where ‘here’ is.

This young Spanish woman is tall, with long dark hair and dark skin. She has fiery eyes that flash from kindness, to anger, to fear, in an instant. She is naked and she has a body that makes my dick hurt. She has to be 5 foot 10 inches barefoot, and I guessed her weight to be possibly 145. Her huge dark breasts are almost too large for her slender frame, but she walks with a glide and moves as easily as a butterfly.

When we got her upstairs and into the bathroom, I walked out to let them try and get her bathed. Then we could see if she was hungry. I had no more than gotten to the refrigerator to get a beer, than I heard all three of them laughing and giggling.

I heard splashing and more laughing and heard the jets come on when they had the huge tub filled. I couldn’t resist one look.

I stepped to the doorway and all three were in the huge whirlpool tub. The water was steaming, and the jets were blowing streams of hot water and bubbles across them, as they splashed, bathed, and washed each other’s hair.

What a sight. I walked away and sat in the den while they had their fun and became friends. I was sure Monica would have a hard time accepting where she is and what year it is, but she already knew that being here alive, was better than being dead, or worse, being raped and held captive by pirates.

They all came into the den, each wrapped in a big white towel. Monica’s skin was darker; she had an olive glow to her color. She was a beauty, not that Annie and Stacy weren’t beautiful young women, as well. Monica was close to six inches taller than either of them, and she walked like she was gliding on the floor. The thought came to me about her schooling, she was taught how to walk and how to talk. She had been schooled on three continents, I wondered if she was royalty.

Annie handed her a beer and she looked at the aluminum can like it was a snake, then as she saw us drink from the opening, she did the same and screwed up her face at the taste.

“Do you not drink beer?” Annie asked.

“I have never tasted such foul drink, beer you call it?” she responded.

“Yes, perhaps you have heard it called ale?”

“I have tasted ale, but did not like the taste, this is not ale.”

“Stacy, perhaps Monica would like a glass of water or maybe a Coke.”

“I’ll get her one,” Stacy said, and ran to the kitchen, her towel still on the seat next to Monica and Annie. My girls have no shame when we’re indoors. They’re as comfortable being naked as they are clothed. I wonder sometimes if they aren’t testing my resistance, or just doing this like they did as little girls playing naked all the time, back when Carol was alive.

Stacy brought the canned Coke back and Monica first sipped it and made a face again, then she sipped more and smiled.

“Are you hungry, Monica?” I asked.

“I am feeling hunger. Yet more so, I am feeling the need to know where I am and how I got to this place,” she answered in perfect, southern, down-home English, of course with an accent that made her even more attractive to me.

“Annie, you and Stacy tell her what she wants to know, you’ll be better able to explain than I could.”

I sat and watched and listened while the three became even closer as they learned the differences in languages that were the same, yet a hundred and seventy years apart. Words had different meanings, and questions and answers sometimes brought frowns to each of them.

The fact that each of them was extremely educated, though in different centuries, made it easier to gain some ground and accept the differences as they talked, sometimes laughing at their own attempts to convey a feeling in words.

Monica wasn’t royalty, but she was the daughter of an admiral in the Spanish Armada. She was being groomed to be courted by royalty and had already been promised to a young nobleman, whom, with the right circumstances, could actually become king.

Monica wasn’t impressed with him. I gathered this much as I listened to her speak of him.

She even confessed that she had daydreamed of a handsome young pirate taking her hostage on this trip back to Spain and teaching her body the physical love she had read about. Her young nobleman was a pale skinned panty-waist, she had said, with a slight shiver of her body that set her breasts into action.

She had drank her Coke and sat popping the sides of the thin aluminum can, looking at it, still amazed at the container. Her towel was down to her waist, as was Annie’s. Stacy had never picked hers back up and they sat with their breasts exposed, it was a Kodak moment. I wished for a picture of the three of them sitting there, but felt as if I would be taking advantage of their innocence.

What the hell, I thought and went to retrieve the digital camera from the bathroom. I picked up two of the heavier coins and brought them with me.

“Monica, tell us about these coins. What are they called and what is their worth?” I said, as I handed them to her and sat back across from them. I switched the camera back to picture mode and made sure it would store the pictures on the card.

“These are ‘pieces of eight;’ you can see the 8 engraved into the gold. They are Spanish Escudos, worth one thousand pesos in Mexican currency and worth one Doubloon. A Doubloon means doblé, or double as you say here.

“It is worth two escudos and is the largest gold coin in our monetary scale,” she explained.

I didn’t know a lot more than I did about Spanish gold coins, but I knew we had a lot of money in the bathroom.

“You tell me we are now in Texas, is this the Tejás that is part of Mexico?”

“Not any more; it was at one time. It is now a state in America. There are now fifty states,” Annie explained.

“There were only twenty three when I left Savannah, fifteen days ago,” she said, shaking her head.

I could tell she was having a hard time getting a grip on all this. I suppose it is a lot different going forward in time. For us to go back like this is easy, because of our knowledge of history. Monica has no knowledge of the future, neither do we.

“Does your society not wear clothing?” she asked, and we all laughed.

“Our society is very strict about being clothed, but we are in our own home and we can do as we please. It just so happens that we choose NOT to wear many clothes when we’re alone. Does that shock you?” Annie asked.

“No, I am not shocked. I never preferred to wear clothes as a small child and I hate all the frills and lace I am told ladies have to wear. I like this, I see Mister Sandusky is clothed, are the men not allowed to be unclothed?”

“I like being unclothed, just as much as my daughters; but out of respect to our guest of the evening, I wear clothes,” I explained.

“I have never seen but one unclothed man,” she said, and smiled when Annie and Stacy laughed.

I had been taking pictures of the three of them as we talked and now handed the camera to Stacy, so she could show Monica the pictures.

Needless to say, she was shocked to see pictures of herself, Annie, and Stacy, sitting with their breasts exposed, talking and laughing.

“How is this possible, to see us this way. I know there are photographic cameras, but this was in the tick of a clock,” she said, in wonder.

“Show her the pictures of the pirates on the beach,” I said, and Stacy played the video and let her hold the camera close to watch them.

She first turned the camera on all sides, wondering how the pirates were inside the small camera.

“Where is this ocean? The water and the sand and the trees are so full of beauty.”

“The island if, in fact, it is an island, is inside the mirror, where we pulled you from the grasp of the pirates that wanted to rape and ravage you,” Annie told her.

“Show this to me,” she said, ready to see this.

“It’s dark there now, when the morning comes, we will all go to the beach and walk naked, that is if you like,” I told her.

“You will walk naked also?” she looked at me, smiling.

“If you aren’t offended, I will.”

“I will in no way be offended. I am eager to see a nude man such as you.”

“You will love seeing Dad then, he is quite striking with no clothes on,” Annie laughed, and I shot her a quick glance.

“This must be a wonderful place to live. I hope you will let me stay with you. I surely have no desire to return to Spain and become the wife of a pale buffoon,” she laughed.