THE GREY GALLEON. My father in Africa told a story (Book Excerpt from 'Father Africa, Mother Nile', an African memoir by Roy Lester Pond)

Then Rodney Henry Pond came along. My mother re-married, this time to a handsome, towering Hemingwayesque man, without the beard, though he wore one for a time too. Rodney was a chunk of the romantic old Africa and he was an impossible rival for me. He was as prickly as a bull elephant and constantly told me to ‘watch my tone’ and as a result, I developed a fine line of insolence with him that sharpened my language skills. We lived in a small colliery town at the edge of a game reserve, in a valley so hot it seemed that the buried coal was on fire beneath our feet and melted the tar on the roads so that it oozed from the edges of the road surface like slow-moving black tears. Road signs warned of wild elephants. I made a friend, Peter. I was in awe of Peter. He had worse luck with fathers than I did. We used to see his young father buzzing to work at the coalmine on a white scooter. Then suddenly we didn’t see him any more. He had been killed one night in a mining accident. Peter had an aura of grief that was impenetrable. But eventually, inevitably, we connected. We fell into a shared obsession with golf, which Rodney taught me to play, in spite of the dazing heat of Central Africa. My stepfather Rodney was something of an artist and Peter and I would see him at work on the veranda of our house. We watched as he painted a scene of a rogue bull elephant. It had flapping ears and a wide, warning gaze, a force of nature that would need careful handling, like Rodney. Peter, bereft of a father, loved to chat with Rodney as he worked, but I would go silent. People show what they think of you by the way they react when others are around. By saying nothing, I conveyed my hostility. We watched as he used a fine brush to put red sparks in the elephant’s eyes. “That makes him look angry,” Peter said. “They’re easily angered,” Rodney said. “Especially an old bull like this. One day some African miners from the No 2 Colliery stole some dynamite and when to hunt a big bull elephant in the adjoining game reserve. It was noon in Central Africa and the grassy plain shivered in the heat. Three young men were going through the bush.

Two of the men were carrying a length of heavy, hollow steel pipe between them, the third carried a sack over his shoulder. They wore old brown overalls, smudged with coal dust as if they had brought some of the lightless underground up with them in their clothes. The day was glowing like carbon itself, smoking white in the glare. Then suddenly, there was the elephant ahead of them. They found it berthed among thorn trees, feeding calmly on the thorn. A noon-bird gave a monotonous piping note. The miners stopped to rest in the long elephant grass and put down the pipe they were carrying and the sack. As well as the pipe they had stolen sticks of dynamite from the Colliery and a machine called an exploder with a handle that you turn to make the sticks go off. They had seen dynamite at work in the mines, tearing great holes in the coal below the ground. They planned to steal the elephant's ivory and sell it to an Indian trader in Bulawayo. They dreamed of earning enough money to get out of the mines for good. They had followed the elephant for hours to this spot. Even though he was so big, he could move through the thick bush as quietly as a current in the river. He went carefully, knowing when people were following. He even tried to trick the miners by holding back his stomach so he would drop no mounds behind him. But he could not hide his spoor. They knew that the spoor they followed was the spoor of bull and none other. Like the lines on a person's fingers, the lines in the elephant’s feet were special too and even though we had lost sight of him at times, they were sure it was the one. The three miners paused to confer. The two who carried a length of steel piping now fiddled with one end, letting a stick of dynamite attached to wires slide into it. Just then a breeze sprung up, stroking the grass of the plain and blowing the scent of the miners to the browsing elephant, that reacted as if a lever had been pressed inside it. It unfurled its ears and set sail into thorn trees. They followed him for hours before he decided to stop near a donga, resting in the shade of some trees. Afraid that they would lose him again, the miners lost no time working in closer from the donga. The bull elephant faced the gully as if it knew the three men are there; it seemed that the elephant had surrendered the initiative to them and stood by waiting to see what they would do next. Hunters have an old rule about hunting elephants, ‘When hunting the elephant it is advisable to go as close to the elephant as you dare - and then, before firing, go a few yards closer. It does not pay to miss because they do not give you a second chance, just a good trampling.’ The three miners crouching against the eroded wall of the donga began cramming something into the mouth of the pipe. There was a clank and tinkle of metal pieces sliding into it. One of the miners produced a small metal box from a sack he carried over his shoulder. It was the exploder. He clipped a metal handle into a hole in the side of the exploder casing, then he took the two insulated wires that ran from the mouth of the pipe and connected them to two terminals on the exploder. There was sweat on the faces of the miners, while in the forest the noon bird made cooling sounds. They were ready. On a signal from the man with the exploder, they rose, two of them grasping the length of pipe, holding it under their arms like a battering ram, while the third stood to one side, holding the exploder. The hunters climbed the wall of the donga. The elephant gave a hiss like a sigh of escaping steam and shifted, bracing itself. The men went to it, closer and closer. It seemed that they intended to take the pipe right to the feet of the elephant before running. They had a length of wire running from the pipe to the exploder, at least enough to allow them to return to the safety of the donga. They stopped fifteen metres from the elephant, pointing the mouth of the pipe at the tusker. It was lunacy what the miners were planning to do. They had loaded the pipe with an explosive stick and topped it with nuts and bolts and scraps of iron, believing they could use it as a cannon to sink a galleon. The elephant flapped its ears, making dust of the dry mud on its back. It then twirled its trunk and picked up dust, which it tossed up like warning clouds. The three miners waited for its attack, as it flattened its ears, curled its trunk under its body, making itself a smaller target, a sign that it was not bluffing, but was ready to charge. “The bull shrieked and made its lethal rush. The man with the exploder, partly concealed from the elephant by a tree stump, twisted the handle on the exploder. A deafening crash split the day...” Rodney fell silent and lost himself in a detail of the painting? “What then?” Peter said. “What, when?” Rodney said, teasingly. “Oh, you mean the elephant. There was little left of the two miners holding the pipe... The exploder man, protected by the tree stump, was still in one piece but had been flung unconscious or dead onto the ground. The blast appeared to have produced some confusion in the beast for it now acted in an unaccountable way. It went to where the two miners lay and stamped the ground, shrieking at them, long piercing shrieks. It threw a fit of filthy anger, pounding, goring the ground with its tusks, flailing the air with its trunk, all the while shrieking. When this display failed to rouse the miners, it calmed and with its trunk explored delicately the remains on the ground. Remarkably, it then used its trunk to gather the remains together in a pile, before strolling off into the mopane bush, only to return carrying a fallen branch in its trunk, which it deposited over the remains. It kept doing this, building a cairn of branches over the remains. Yet it left the intact body of the exploder. Darkness came. Do you know he did not leave the miners all that night? There were hyena tracks around, but he kept them away. He kept hearing the hyenas and saw their shapes move by in the moonlight as they came to investigate the remains, of the miners. They were in search of an easy meal, but each time they came too close, the elephant charged, and they ran away laughing bitterly. Was he protecting them? It was a kind thing to do after they had tried to take his ivory.” “Did the other miner survive?” “Yes, he lived to tell the story.” “What a smashing story. Thank you,” Peter said. “Your dad is great,” Peter said outside. “Yeah, he’s okay.” I was a bit proud of him and I felt churlish for treating him coolly in front of Peter.

(Excerpt from Father Africa, Mother Nile, Amazon paperback and Kindle