“Come on. Don’t stop,” Rosa whispered.
Colour was all over the eastern heaven and touching the upper roofs and spires.
“Hi,” Rosa said, when they had gone a little distance, “we shall never be able to do it. I am seen to be a woman and there is a patrol in the streets stopping people.”
“Where?”
“There in front.”
About a hundred yards in front of them there was an interruption in the flow of people. They could see the gleam of helmets beyond the blackness of the crowd, which grew greater as men and women flocked up to it. Plainly the police or troops were examining all who were going that way.
“Hi,” Rosa said, “I can’t face the police in this dress. It’s very silly, but I shall faint.”
“Hold up,” Hi said. “It will be perfectly all right. We will get down to that barge on the beach there and you can pin your cloak round you for a skirt.”
Within a stone’s throw from the water-front was a green barge, which Hi had noticed on the day of his landing. She was lying on her bilge with the butts of her timbers sticking out like bones. In the shelter of this wreck Rosa pinned her cloak as a skirt and made her hat look less manly. After this they marched into the crowd, which closed up behind them as others arrived. It was a silent crowd of men and women not fully awake. One or two voices asked, “What are they stopping us for?” Some said, “Dogana,” or “Search of suspects,” or “Search of the accursed Whites, the murderers.”
The light grew upon the faces at each instant, the crowd gathered and the delay continued.