"Oh, I hope and pray it is so!" she said.
He took a shining strand of the dark, loosened hair in his hand and kissed it; and she clung to him and looked up at him. And the winds of the ocean stirred about them and filled the sails; and the great ship, for whose safety they had endured so much, bore them slowly homeward.
"AND THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN STIRRED ABOUT THEM AND FILLED THE SAILS."
XLIV
The warehouse of Rufus Stevens' Sons stood on the waterfront, huge, square, and with many windows. There was no rutted road here, with its scum of foul, black mud; stones were set in smoothly and solidly. The row of brick arches opening into the warehouse were high enough to admit a laden dray. Anthony stood in the mouth of one and looked in. The place was like a dim vast cavern packed with riches and filled with aromatic smells; porters, draymen, and clerks moved about in the half-light like gnomes; never before had Anthony been so impressed by the complete meaning of order, routine, spaciousness, wealth.
The wharves of the firm were heaped with cargo; three square-riggers were tied there; windlasses turned; seamen chanted as they threw their weight against the bars and swung the merchandise up from the holds. Anthony looked from the ships, with their abundance and ordered labor, to the warehouse and its repletion and thought of that day one half-year before—the day the Rufus Stevens, under her makeshift mast and ill-fitting sail, rounded the bend in the river, amazing all who beheld her.
And that wonderful cargo! That shipful of riches! What Charles had dreamed of it came true; for there was the house of Rufus Stevens' Sons once more set squarely upon its foundations; there it stood, fixed, settled, strong, with no man to speak a word against it.