“Cassian?!” Inhaling a shaky breath, he looked into Cassian’s eyes, and then he reached out and touched Cassian’s cheek. “Oh, God, Cassian, it’s you, it’s you.”
He released a single sob, and then his face froze in a pain-stricken expression, as though he was crying but no sounds were coming out. Cassian cupped his cheek.
“I’m here, James,” he said softly. “I’m here.”
James seemed to bask in his care for a moment, shutting his eyes. Cassian kissed their foreheads together but struggled to maintaincontact for more than a couple of seconds because of the constant need for him to keep treading water.
His chest ached as he broke away.
“Cassian, this is it for us,” James lamented. “It has to be.”
“No,” Cassian said, his voice harsh. “No, Irefuseto let this be the end.”
“But wh-wh-what c-can we do?” James said, his teeth beginning to chatter violently. “I’m so c-c-cold, and the ship, she is g-going.”
Cassian began to look around, scanning the area foranythingthey could use. “We have to find something to float on.” He searched some more. “Where in God’s name is that lifeboat I was working to flip?”
After a moment more, he spotted it, closer to the area where the ship’s bow was submerged in water. Even though it was still upside down, men were scrambling onto it.
“Look! James, there! It’s our lifeboat!” he shouted, pointing. James looked too, following Cassian’s finger. “We have to swim to it! Before it’s too late!”
Shutting his eyes once more, James shook his head. “I can’t! It’s too c-cold for me.”
“You can and youwill,” Cassian ordered, only barely keeping his own teeth from chattering. He took hold of the fabric-covered cork shoulder pad of James’s lifebelt and pulled. “Let’s go. Follow me.” He pulled once more. “Now!”
Mustering all of his strength, Cassian began to swim while James floundered in the water beside him.
“Remember what I showed you!” Cassian instructed as he moved his arms through the freezing water. “Keep your fingers loose. You can do this, James!”
All of a sudden, there was a loudcracklike lightning or a gunshot.
Cassian swiveled his head toward the ship.
A second crack sounded out, as loud and striking as the first. Only then did Cassian see what it was. Attached to the closest ofTitanic’s four funnels were thick, black cables, the ones that provided the funnels themselves with much of their stability.
And they were snapping.
One by one.
Crack!
The sound was still echoing when the funnel began to sway back and forth. And Cassian had the harrowing and clear thought that it would fall. He looked at the water exactly below where the funnel was—the area most likely to be in the funnel’s future path. People were swimming there. Lots of them. Cassian clenched his teeth, cringing, though he only felt a relatively small pinch of sorrow for them over their seemingly inevitable fate.
Until he recognized Jacob Calbot in the crowd.
“Jacob!” he called out the instant he saw his friend, but as Jacob’s name left his lips, there was another horrible series of cracks, the sounds exploding into the air. And then, the funnel began to fall.
Cassian could only watch in horror as the funnel crashed into the water, crushing the people who were swimming beneath it, Jacob included.
He was still staring at the funnel, transfixed and mesmerized, when the ocean rose up in front of him. A series of waves from the funnel knocked both him and James backward, disorienting him.
When Cassian finally righted himself in the water, he was relieved to see that he hadn’t lost James.
“Cassian! Oh, God, those p-poor people!” James said.
Cassian didn’t have that heart to tell him that he’d seen Jacob among them.
“I know,” he said instead, and he quickly pushed the thought out of his mind. He could face all of his inevitable sorrow once thisnightmare was over. Right now, he needed to focus on finding that Goddamned lifeboat.
