Starting to shake now himself, Cassian looked around and almost cried with relief as he spotted it only a couple of swim strokes from where they were. Hope filled his chest, enlivening him as nothing had since he and James had been thrown into the sea.
In a horrible twist of fate, the same catastrophic event that had ended Jacob’s life had perhaps made Cassian and James’s survival still possible.
Cassian began swimming for it. James followed, successfully moving forward in the water with his slightly improved swimming strokes.
It only took them a brief moment to reach it. But in that time, so had others.
Through the scrambling and thrashing of the men around him, Cassian worked to pull himself up onto the overturned boat. Just as he nearly got a foothold, someone shoved him back. James, too, reached up, but then someone inadvertently smashed his fingers with their foot as they climbed atop the raft. Soon, the overturned boat was nearly full with what seemed like over twenty men balancing on it. Together, Cassian and James swam over to the back, keeping to the rightmost side of the boat, where there was enough room for one more or maybe two.
“Come on, come on,” a man said back there, extending his hand. “Hurry.”
Cassian moved to grab it but then realized that whichever of them took that next-to-final spot would be mostly out of the water, while the other might have to cling to the structure. Or else kneel with both of his legs submerged.
It had to be James.
“You go,” Cassian said to James.
“But—”
“It’s not a request.”
James took the man’s hand and let himself be hoisted up. He knelt on the boat to the right of the keel. Immediately after becoming settled, James twisted around and extended his hand for Cassian. Cassian let himself be pulled up, too, though the water came up to his waist when he was on his knees. James’s calves and feet were still submerged as well. Together, their weight had caused this part of the overturned boat to become even more submerged in the freezing water. Hopefully, though, it would be enough for them to survive.
“Did I s-s-swim all right this t-time?” James asked him.
Cassian huffed a half-laugh. Cognizant of the fact that the catastrophic event unfolding around them would mean that others on the boat shouldn’t take issue with his being physically close with James, Cassian wrapped his arms around the man he loved and pulled him close.
“P-p-perfectly middling,” he said.
He squeezed James over the lower half of his lifebelt.
Screams had been ringing out all around them, but before that moment, they’d only been a constant roaring hum in Cassian’s ears, one that carried little emotional resonance overall, especially while he’d been working to reach the boat.
Now, though, thanks to both the relative safety of their overturned vessel and the lightness of that little exchange with James, Cassian was able to finally hear them and to register them for what they were—the fearful screams of people facing their final moments.
Grief landed in his stomach like a stone.
Cassian was still reeling from it when another series of strange, thunderous sounds reached his ears—pops and cracks and booms. He needed a few moments to think before he realized what they were and what might have been causing them.
Titanic’s structure seemed to be failing.
Cassian looked up at the ship in horror, and exactly then, something unbelievable happened: she seemed to break in half. After a second of stunned stillness, he blinked a few times, though he couldn’t seem to fully comprehend what it was that he’d witnessed. Over the next little while—the shrieks and screams of other people and the ear-splitting roar of the snapping ship reverberating in his head—Cassian stayed frozen, unable to even breathe.
And then, when there seemed to be only one-half ofTitanicleft floating in the water—only half of all of her splendor and beauty remaining above the surface, seconds or minutes from being lost permanently to the Atlantic—Cassian let out an exhale and hugged James closer.
“Dear God,” he whispered.
Aboard the half of the ship that remained above the waterline, clusters of people were clinging to each other and to the railings, swarms of passengers and crew members writhing and moving around, reminding Cassian of insects in a nest, though they were barely visible in the darkness. Intermittently, people plummeted into the water below, sometimes seeming to hit pieces of the ship mid-fall. Bile climbed up Cassian’s throat as he continued to watch the scene unfold.
Slowly, the ship began to disappear beneath the ocean, bit by bit. Every second that passed, the roaring screams of Cassian’s former fellow passengers became louder. Soon, the sound was so powerful, so profound, that he found himself wondering if he’d ever experience silence again.
Someone at the front of the lifeboat called out, breaking through the noise.
“Don’t permit others to come aboard! Already we are too full!”
Craning his head, Cassian could see that their overturned vessel was, indeed, full. Some people—those more squarely in the middleand even the officer in the front—were standing, balanced precariously on their feet to keep as much of themselves out of the water as possible. Others were clinging to the structure, their bodies still mostly in the water, while the rest, like he and James, were on their knees.
Cassian let out a long breath of relief, even as his insides violently twisted with guilt. Unfortunately, their little lifeboat could not fit more people, neither could it likely bear more weight.
