But soon the twilight of that narrow band was deepening, and almost at once, it seemed, we were moving from that twilight dusk into a deep darkness that obscured all things about us. We had reached the dark side of Triton, we knew, and now moved more carefully still, for upon that dark side, we knew equally well, slept half the massed millions of the Neptunian races. The first few compartments which we traversed in that darkness, however, were as empty as those in the twilight behind us. But then, as we moved silently on, we came into the first of the great sleeping-compartments. Even like those which had puzzled us so on Neptune it was, with its towering walls lined with intersecting shelves whose openings, twice as long as they were high, were ranged in rows, one above the other, like giant pigeon-holes. This sleep-compartment, though, was not empty like those upon Neptune, for in its hundreds of shelf-openings, its great pigeon-holes, there slept hundreds upon hundreds of the disk-bodied Neptunians! Their seven short limbs folded up around their disk-bodies, they reposed in those openings with their bulging, glassy eyes as open as ever. It was evident they all were sleeping, since the dimness of the day upon Neptune had made lids for those eyes unnecessary in the evolution of their strange race. And eery was that sight to Marlin and myself, as we stepped silently into and across the great sleep-compartment. For it seemed to us that the hundreds of Neptunians reposing thus in those wall-openings were regarding us fixedly with their great multiple eyes, watching us as we moved across the compartment. None stirred, though, as we made our way across it to the opposite door, and moved into the next, which we found to be another sleep-compartment also, its wall-openings, too, holding hundreds of the sleeping monsters. Through a dozen such sleep-compartments we went, moving with infinite quiet and care, lest any of those sleeping thousands about us be aroused by any sound. And almost it seemed to Marlin and me as we crept on that that hope was ended in any case, since so far we had found none of the landing-compartments for which we searched, none of the cylindrical fliers in which alone we could escape. We had passed through other compartments that held the great heat-radiating globes, now, great glowing globes whose intense heat was not radiated out horizontally at all, but sent up in vertical heat-currents, which by convection in some way warmed all Triton's atmosphere. Past these and through still more sleep-compartments we went, pausing now and then as from the distance in the dark side there reached us a few staccato voices; still we came not upon any of the landing-compartments for which we searched.