When he looked over the top again he was encouraged to see that Jean Paul was labouring hard. He had often to throw himself down in full sight to give his heart a chance. Meanwhile they were coming very close. They were already within gunshot when the peak they were both striving for intervened between them. The breed was aiming for one side, Jack for the other. Jack wondered, should their heads rise over the top simultaneously, which would have the strength to lift his gun.
Toward the base of the peak of rock the ridge became steep and broken. Excruciating pains attacked Jack's legs, and his sinews failed him. He dropped to his hands and knees, and crawled on. He had almost reached the little peak, when suddenly a dark face looked down on him from over the top, and he had just time to drop behind a jutting shoulder of rock to escape the bullet that whistled overhead. The race had gone to Jean Paul.
Jack lay debating his next move. Meanwhile it was grateful to rest, and to feel the strength steal back. His case was not yet hopeless, he decided. The rounded cone of rock that Jean Paul held was easily accessible from any point of the arc visible to Jack, and from the speed with which the breed had gained the summit, he guessed that it must be even easier from the other side. With darkness to aid him he ought to be able to surprise his enemy. The sun was setting now. At close quarters Jack's revolver would give him an advantage.
But this same train of reasoning must have passed through the breed's mind, for later, upon peeping around his rock, Jack saw that Jean Paul had retreated from his peak, and was running off to the right across the flat battlement that connected it with the slightly higher cone that was the true summit of Mount Darwin. He had started to scramble up the face of the rock. Springing up, Jack fired at him, but it was too far, and there was cover behind the jutting ledges. Jean Paul gained the top in safety.
Jack promptly seized the position he had abandoned. Rising cautiously over the side farthest from Jean Paul, he built himself, stone upon stone, a little parapet upon the summit, behind which he could lie and watch his enemy through the interstices. Presently he saw that Jean Paul was following suit, covering himself behind his wall while he raised it. A shot or two was exchanged, but without effect, and as if by mutual consent they left off. Their lead was too precious to be splashed on the rocks.
So they watched, each holding alone, as it were, a heaven-piercing tower of the same castle, with the battlement between. It was a dizzy perch. The whole world was spread beneath them, a world of confused gray, and brown mountain peaks like vast stalagmites pointing fingers toward heaven. It was like a nightmare sea suddenly petrified with its waves upheaved. In the whole vast wilderness there was no suggestion of mankind or of life. Up there the thin, cold air sharpened the senses; one seemed to become aware of the great roll of our planet to the east, and instinctively clung to the rock to keep from being flung off into space.
About two hundred yards separated the white man and the breed. Jean Paul's position was some fifty feet higher than Jack's, and Jack had therefore to build the higher parapet. Nevertheless Jack's heart beat strong; he had him trapped now. At the same time it was a well-defended trap, and there he might sit watching him until starvation took a hand in the fight. Jack had only full rations for one day more; he suspected Jean Paul might be better provided. A red man starves slower than a white. Each could reach plenty of snow to quench his thirst, but there was nothing to burn up there. Jack looked through his peepholes, and considered how he might bring matters to an issue.
On his right in the corner between the hogback and the final peak there was a bowl a thousand feet deep or more, with a little lake in the bottom of a colour between sapphire and emerald. The sides of the bowl were steep slopes of rubble. Jack could not see all this from where he lay, but he had marked it on the way up. After dark he thought it might be possible to crawl around the rim of the bowl to the base of Jean Paul's tower of rock, and scale it from that side. This he could see, and he scanned it hard. It was a staggering climb—say, two hundred feet of precipitous limestone. But it was scarred and ridged and cracked by centuries of weather; and it was not absolutely perpendicular. It might be done.
Having made up his mind, he coolly rolled up in his blanket to sleep behind his parapet until dark. Small chance of Jean Paul's venturing across the battlement.
When he awoke it was as dark as it would get. He fortified himself with bread and meat washed down by snow-water. He left his gun rolled in the blanket—the revolver would serve better—and he propped his hat an a stone so that the crown would peep above his little wall. If it should become light before he reached him, it might serve to occupy Jean Paul's attention for a little. If he succeeded in knocking it off its stone, so much the better.