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boastful of this belief that half the passengers refused to board the lifeboats when the crew told them to. It was only when the decks began flooding and the ship’s listing could no longer be ignored that panic had set in, starting a mad scramble.
    They were all gone now, the lifeboats. He knew most of them were less than half-full, leaving fifteen hundred people to die. He could see a good number of these people scrambling toward the stern, climbing higher and higher, hoping the ship would stop its plunge to the bottom before the water reached them.
    Mr. King knew better.
    He began swimming toward the exposed deck, twenty feet in front of him. The surface was littered with scraps of paper, clothing that hadn’t yet sunk, a child’s doll. He pushed through it all, trying to keep his mind from thinking that all the clutter paled in comparison to the number of corpses that would soon fill the ocean. Before emerging from the water, he realized he could stand. He’d kept hold of the life preserver he’d brought from the antechamber. Now he slipped an arm through it and rested it on his shoulder. He trudged out of the water, feeling the deck slipping down under his feet like a stepless escalator.
    He remembered that the stern’s propellers had risen out of the water at 2:10 in the morning—which they had already done. By 2:20, the entire ship sank below the surface . . . or rather, would sink. He had fewer than ten minutes to find David.
    He looked at his watch. It was on Pinedale time: 7:00, exactly. The second hand had stopped.
    â€œDavid!” he yelled. “David!”
    The stern rose higher. People screamed. Chairs, luggage, bodies tumbled down the deck toward him. The water rose up behind him, touching his ankles, reaching his calves.
    He leaned forward, climbed.
    A light, shining on him from an empty lifeboat stanchion, sputtered and went out. Some of the bulbs clinging to an eave running the length of the deck exploded under a surge of electrical current. The rest of them flickered, then went black.
    Mr. King looked past the railing at the vast ocean, black under a moonless sky. He thought he could make out a handful of lifeboats bobbing around like giant bodies. He could only hope David was on one of them. If he had come over before the final boats had left, they would have taken him, a child, wouldn’t they?
    â€œDavid!” he called.
    A faint answer reached him: “Dad?”
    â€œDavid?”
    â€œDad!”
    It was coming from the stern. He ran—as quickly as the rising deck allowed him to. He grabbed the railing to pull himself along, pull himself up.
    â€œDavid!” Mr. King stared up at the people crowded on the stern. Many were jumping or falling over the side, plunging into the water sixty feet below.
    Lord , he thought, let me reach my son. Let us find the portal home together. And if that’s not to be, let us die together.
    â€œDad?”
    The small voice was close.
    â€œDae? I’m here! Where are you?”
    â€œHere!”
    He climbed. He reached a spot where a doorway jutted out from the Titanic ’s massive center. Beside it a circular vent, like a large candy cane, protruded from the deck. David clung to the upward side of the vent, hugging it. He was wet and shivering violently. His hair was plastered to his skull. His eyes were closed. They opened, took in his father, and his quivering lips bent into a smile.
    He said, “Is that . . . is that really you?” His smile faltered, breaking his dad’s heart.
    Mr. King broke from the railing, almost slid away on the deck, and grabbed the vent. He shuffled around to get his arm over David’s back. The boy’s trembling muscles reverberated into his dad’s arm, into his body.
    â€œIt’s me, Dae,” he said. “I’m here.”
    David hitched in a breath. He started to weep.
    Mr. King closed his eyes, wishing none of this for his boy.
    He squeezed him.