The wildness of his hilarity seemed at times to point to an unhinged mind, and as the good ship _White Swan_ neared her destination, he became so excited that pronounced symptoms of madness appeared. These symptoms increased so rapidly, that when within about five hundred miles of Aberdeen, the poor doctor had to be locked in the captain’s cabin. He refused all food, and when it was placed inside the door instantly flung it into the sea from the stern windows. “Only one more night and part of a day,” said the skipper, “and we shall be in Aberdeen, if this breeze holds, when we will immediately have a doctor on board to see to our poor friend and companion, Sinclair.” But it was not to be so; for next morning, when the captain went to the cabin to ask the doctor how he fared, as was his custom several times during the day, although he only got abuse for his pains, and even threats of violence, he received no answer. He knocked and knocked again without obtaining a reply, and mounting the companion peered into the cabin through the skylight; but not a trace of Doctor Sinclair was to be seen. Finally the cabin door was burst open, and to the regret of all it was found that the doctor had disappeared. There was no mystery about it, for it was a clear case of self-destruction while of unsound mind: he had leaped out of one of the stern windows and drowned himself. On reaching port our yarn was soon spread abroad, but of course laughed at by every one, as we had no proof that Doctor Angus Sinclair had ever existed, except in our imagination. True, we had the three bottles and the parchment, and these were in due time sent to the College of Physicians in London, where they were analyzed and commented upon in the medical journals. What little remained of the “Suspender of Animation” was given to rabbits and dogs, and it really had such a soporific power that they could not be awakened, and, as long as they were kept in an atmosphere below 25°, they remained without signs of decay, even for years after. Unfortunately, we had used, in restoring the old doctor to animation, all the contents of the blue bottle--three drops excepted. The contents of the red bottle proved, on analysis, to be a concentrated quintessence of brandy, which accounts for the doctor requiring it to be mixed with hot water before being administered. His idea was that animation might often be usefully suspended in the case of persons out of work, on a voyage, or in embarrassed circumstances; that many, who wished to skip over, as it were, a few years of life,--either for the purpose of evading creditors, or escaping the nagging tongue of a contentious wife--would welcome his discovery and hail it, indeed, as the greatest of all possible boons.