CHAPTER I

THE DRYAD DOOR


It was a horrible day at sea, horrible even on board the new and
splendid _Monarchic_. All the prettiest people had disappeared from
the huge dining-saloon. They had turned green, and then faded away,
one by one or in hurried groups; and now the very thought of music at
meals made them sick, in ragtime.

Peter Rolls was never sick in any time or in any weather, which was
his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities
were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways,
said his best friends--the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship
played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature
which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to
side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls did
not mind.

He was sorry for the men and girls he knew, including his sister, who
lay in deck chairs pretending to be rugs, or who went to bed and
wished themselves in their peaceful graves. But for himself, the wild
turmoil of the waves filled him with sympathetic restlessness. It had
never occurred to Peter that he was imaginative, yet he seemed to
know what the white-faced storm was saying, and to want to shout an
answer.

The second morning out (the morning after the _Monarchic_ had to pass