Free Trolley to Yesterday by John Bellairs

cabin.
    With a stiff bow the soldier turned away. When he was gone, the Admiral heaved a relaxed sigh and fixed the professor with a penetrating stare. "Your Italian is pretty good," he said in perfect English. "But I suppose that's the result of a first-class education. Where did you go? Harvard? Yale? Princeton?"
    The professor's jaw dropped. How could this man know about American colleges that didn't exist in 1453? And where had he learned to speak with an American accent? When Brewster translated, everyone sounded British. What on earth was going on?
    The Admiral broke up. He threw back his head and laughed. The professor was annoyed—if there was something funny going on, he wanted to know about it instead of being kept in the dark.
    "Now see here!" he said crabbily. "You certainly aren't an Italian admiral, and if you don't mind I'd like to know who ..." The professor's voice died, and a light dawned in his eyes. "Good Lord, don't tell me!" he exclaimed. "You must be ..."
    The Admiral grinned. Without a word he held out his hand and showed the three travelers the large gold signet ring that he wore. On it were engraved the letters A.T.
    Johnny blinked and stared at the man. "I don't get it," he said. "Who are you supposed to be?" "Yeah," put in Fergie.
    The professor gave the boys an exasperated look. "You two get F for Cleverness this week," he growled. "This is Aurelian Townsend, the man who built the Time Trolley that we used to get here. Remember? I told you that he disappeared mysteriously years and years ago. Well, here he is."
    Johnny and Fergie were totally flabbergasted. They opened their mouths and closed them, but no sound came out. Finally Fergie spoke.
    "Are... are you on the level?" he asked.
    Mr. Townsend smiled blandly and nodded. "Indeed I am. It's very nice to meet you all. Wonderful, actually. I was beginning to think that no one would ever come back with the Time Trolley. You see—"
    "Hey, wait a minute!" said Fergie suddenly. "How come you left the trolley and decided to come here?"
    Mr. Townsend sighed. "I didn't have much choice in the matter, young man. The idling mechanism on the trolley went haywire, so the stupid piece of tin went zooming back to the twentieth century without me. I've been living in a monastery on the seacoast near here for the last several days, and I had begun to wonder if I was going to spend the rest of my life there." He paused, coughed, and glanced around nervously. "But see here," he went on hurriedly, "we can discuss this all later. These men here think I'm their admiral, so I guess I'll have to start acting like one." He turned away, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted several rapid-fire orders in Italian. Then he turned back to the three travelers and spoke to them in a low voice. "Come to my cabin with me. My surgeon is there, preparing a dressing for this young man's cut, and food is being brought. We can discuss what we ought to do next. Okay?"
    The professor and the boys nodded, and they followed Mr. Townsend across a plank that had been thrown down to bridge the gap between the two ships. A little while later all four of them were sitting in a luxuriously furnished cabin in the Venetian galley. A surgeon washed the cut on Johnny's arm and bound up the wound with clean white cloth. Then he bowed and left, and everyone's attention turned to food. A large round table stood in the center of the room, and on it lay a bronze bowl full of figs, a jug of wine, and a loaf of bread. A tapestry hung on the rear wall of the cabin, and a carved wooden chest stood in one corner. From outside came a muffled clinking and hammering, and the raspy sound of a saw. Mr. Townsend explained that his men were freeing the galley slaves on the Turkish ship and repairing the hole that the Venetian ship's ram had made when it hit the Turkish galley. When the repairs were finished, Baltoghlu and his men would be forced to row the captured ship to a nearby island that was held