suicide, and I suggested that some accident might have happened to him. He begged me to go round the ship with him, that I might judge for myself whether there was any place from which a passenger could fall into the sea accidentally. After examining every part carefully, and making minute inquiries, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that poor Shaayea had, through excessive fear and an excited imagination, lost his self-control, and had either voluntarily or unconsciously thrown himself into the sea.[1]
All Shaayea's property was collected together: I assisted the captain to make an inventory of it, and then it was put under lock and seal.
We arrived at the Liverpool Docks on Tuesday morning, June 28th. I had an interview with the quarantine officer, and after having entered the name of the "missing" deck passenger in his book, in Arabic and in English, I hastened up to London.
An official inquiry was made into the history of Rabbi Shaayea's disappearance, by order of the Turkish Consul at Manchester; and as it was soon known that I was the only person on board who had conversed with the poor fellow, I was called upon to state all that I knew about him. I had kept a careful journal on the way, and was consequently able to furnish an account, which eventually satisfied the inquirers, that the balance of Shaayea's mind had been destroyed by his continual anxiety and groundless fears. I signed a solemn declaration of the above facts in the presence of a magistrate, whose signature was certified by the Turkish Consul-General in London, and a full report of the case was made to the Ottoman Government.
- ↑ I did not know that emotional disturbance was the cause and condition of insanity, or I should certainly have kept a continual and careful watch over poor Shaayea, but I never suspected that he was in any real danger. I was strongly reminded of his overwhelming dread of imagined dangers while reading lately the very important fact, that "the common causes of insanity are such as produce emotional changes, either in the form of violent agitation of the passions or that chronic state of abnormal emotion which pronounces itself in the habitually exaggerated force of some one passion or desire, whereby the healthy balance of the mind is at length destroyed."—See Bucknill's Psychology of Shakspeare, p. 133. Longman, 1859.
