When a whole hour had passed by and there was nothing to show for it, I began to panic. Her coat by now was drenched with sweat from her efforts. Sometimes she would raise her head to sniff her belly, or kick at her belly with a hind leg. She was in great discomfort, I could see that. The foal should have come by now, but there was no sign of anything emerging yet.

I looked to the horizon, hoping that Pierre might be done with the bulls and be returning for me, but there was no sign of him either. And now, Loulou was giving pitiful whinnies of distress. The foal was not coming out.

As if the weather wanted to speed matters onwards, the clouds were closing in, sweeping darkly across the skies to gather above us and the rain began to fall harder, sweeping down in bitter sheets. Soon it had soaked me to the skin and my sketch pad was utterly ruined. Not that I cared as I was no longer interested in my drawings, my entire focus had become Loulou and her unborn foal. The mare was still flat on her side, but she was no longer heaving and straining. She was lying utterly motionless and I would have thought she was dead except I could see her belly faintly rising and falling. She was breathing still, but exhaustion had beaten her and she had no energy left to push the foal out. She could not deliver it on her own. And I thought of the alternative – that if she did not give birth then both mother and baby would die like this. There was nobody here to help her.

Except, there was me.

But first of all I needed to get to her, and how was I going to do that?

There was only one way, and that was to crawl. I threw myself forward, propelling my body with all my strength so that I fell down hard, face-first, into the grass. I tasted dirt and choked a little on it. And then I pushed myself up on my arms, and surveyed the distance between myself and the mare. It was maybe four horse-lengths to get to Loulou from where I now lay. Not so very far. Yes, I could do this.