In a single glance I saw that the other Neptunian had gripped Marlin and was crushing him against a corner of the compartment's shelving and instantly, with a single great leap, I was upon that other monster, had gained upon it the same throttling grip which I had found was so deadly to these creatures. In a flash the Neptunian had released his hold upon Marlin, was whirling me around the compartment, shaking me this way and that, and wildly attempting to tear itself loose from me, but with the last of my strength I hung to it, and in a few moments it, too, had weakened, then had slumped down in a lifeless, grotesque mass. And as I rose from it I saw that Marlin had staggered up likewise, was coming toward me. None other of the Neptunians had been aroused by the noise of our mad combat, because in the first excitement of that combat the two Neptunians we fought had not thought to cry out, and after I had gained that throttling hold upon them they could not. So around us the silent ranks of Neptunians slept on unaroused, their open, glassy eyes full upon us even in their sleep, while Marlin and I were stumbling toward the compartment's door. "On, Hunt!" he whispered hoarsely. "We still have a chance, if we can find a landing-compartment, can steal one of the cylinders before these sleeping Neptunians wake!" Through the next compartment we went, and the next, and the next, all sleep-compartments, filled with rows of slumbering Neptunians like those behind us, but in our progress we had come upon no landing-compartment. And though we knew that such there were here and there on Triton's dark side, we could not tell, in the darkness and with the huge walls towering all around us, in what direction from us they might be. We could but blunder aimlessly on through the maze of adjoining sleep-compartments in the blind hope that we might chance upon one of the landing-sections, and as we went on, staggering in great, irregular leaps through compartment after compartment, all filled either with masses of sleeping Neptunians or with great heat-radiating mechanisms, we knew that at any moment might come the great signal of light that would awaken the hordes around us.