But that's exactly right. Our circumstances here are... precarious, Miss Marsh. Even at the best of times. And you're quite vulnerable as it is, let alone being left to live well in reach of the... majority, and other predators. More subject to the elements than those of us in homes built to keep out the weather's worst efforts.

[ He thinks, briefly, back to the first stirrings of mutiny aboard Terror: Hickey and a small group of men seizing and holding the Inuit woman prisoner. Irving wouldn't have believed some of those men capable of such savagery, if not for having witnessed it with his own eyes. Hickey's influence, no doubt... an evil that continues to persist here as well, and within a community that's far less united, and far more unpredictable.

It would be easy enough to allow himself be swayed by Kate's objections, of course, to simply walk away from a matter that need not directly concern him, but even to a man passive as he is, that just feels wrong. Perhaps it's unbecoming to get involved, but the moral imperative of needing to do something, to make a practical difference, feels so much stronger. ]

I-I hate to insist, [ he adds hesitantly, uncertain. ] but it isn't safe for you here.