Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/182

 to the ostentatious, ridiculous, pestilent burials of present day civilization.

The young men, acting under Big Fist’s orders, carried the worthless husk to a safe distance from the caves, leaving it there to the rapid disintegration provided by the beasts and birds of prey.

Nadara wept, silently. An elderly lady with a single tooth, espying her, moaned in sympathy. Presently other females, attracted by the moaning, joined them, and, becoming affected by the strange hysteria to which womankind is heir, mingled their moans with those of the toothless one.

Excited by their own noise they soon were shrieking and screaming in hideous chorus. Then came Big Fist and others of the men. The din annoyed them. They set upon the mourners with their fists and teeth scattering them in all directions. Thus ended the festivities.

Or would have had not Big Fist made the fatal mistake of launching a blow at Nadara. Thandar had been standing nearby looking with wonder upon the strange scene.

He had noted the quiet grief of the young girl—real grief; and he had witnessed the hysterical variety of the “mourners”—not sham grief. Precisely, because they made no pretense to grief—it was noise to which they aspired. And as the fiendish din had set his own nerves on edge he