The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Jewel of Seven Stars, by Bram Stoker

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Title: The Jewel of Seven Stars

Author: Bram Stoker

Posting Date: May 19, 2009 [EBook #3781]
Release Date: February, 2003
First Posted: September 4, 2001
Last Updated: July 1, 2005

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL OF SEVEN STARS ***

Produced by Sue Asscher. HTML version by Al Haines.

The Jewel of Seven Stars

by

Bram Stoker

To Eleanor and Constance Hoyt

Contents

I A Summons in the Night
II Strange Instructions
III The Watchers
IV The Second Attempt
V More Strange Instructions
VI Suspicions
VII The Traveller's Loss
VIII The Finding of the Lamps
IX The Need of Knowledge
X The Valley of the Sorcerer
XI A Queen's Tomb
XII The Magic Coffer
XIII Awaking From the Trance
XIV The Birth-Mark
XV The Purpose of Queen Tera
XVI The Cavern
XVII Doubts and Fears
XVIII The Lesson of the "Ka"
XIX The Great Experiment

Chapter I

A Summons in the Night

It all seemed so real that I could hardly imagine that it had ever
occurred before; and yet each episode came, not as a fresh step in the
logic of things, but as something expected. It is in such a wise that
memory plays its pranks for good or ill; for pleasure or pain; for weal
or woe. It is thus that life is bittersweet, and that which has been
done becomes eternal.

Again, the light skiff, ceasing to shoot through the lazy water as when
the oars flashed and dripped, glided out of the fierce July sunlight
into the cool shade of the great drooping willow branches--I standing
up in the swaying boat, she sitting still and with deft fingers
guarding herself from stray twigs or the freedom of the resilience of
moving boughs. Again, the water looked golden-brown under the canopy
of translucent green; and the grassy bank was of emerald hue. Again,
we sat in the cool shade, with the myriad noises of nature both without
and within our bower merging into that drowsy hum in whose sufficing
environment the great world with its disturbing