He took the bags to his room, opened them wide—two old mouths, gaping—then sat on the bed trying to picture the islands and what he might need there. He was a man of the south country. He had never been further north than Gloucester. The islands, he assumed, were places where “north” achieved a sort of purity, a meaning it could never quite have in Somerset. But he knew something of them, of what they might be, had read in papers and quarterlies the reports of travellers, men made poetical by mountains and cataracts and such. Tours in the north had become quite the thing. Albion’s own savage back room, its last true wilderness. And, more usefully, he had spent a week in column with the 71st on the way to Salamanca. He had heard their language, heard some of their songs. He had liked the look of them. They had seemed to him like men who might be trusted.

First into the larger bag went his boat cloak, then two plain shirts from the trunk, a pair of blue slops, some buckskin breeches. He packed two waistcoats and two white neckerchiefs. He packed Lovall’s writing case in the smaller bag together with some nankeen trousers, his razor and strop, the Windsor soap, some smallclothes.

The fiddle had its own case, and the case a leather strap he could wear across his shoulder.

What else?

One of his father’s books of music? But they were too large and too fragile. He would not be able to forgive himself if one was lost or destroyed.