“I have legs,” I pointed out. “It’s true that I cannot kick with them or hold on tight, but they will provide me with enough weight to balance myself. I can sit upright and stay on board. And if you give me a switch, a tree branch to use, I can tickle Loulou onwards instead of kicking.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Pierre insisted. “You’ll fall.”

“Before I lost the use of my legs, I had an excellent seat,” I told him. “I could ride bareback at a gallop.”

I looked hard at him. “I have ridden horses my whole life, Pierre, do not presume to tell me I can’t do this.”

“I’ll take you home and come back for them …”

Even as he said this, I could see Pierre knew it was impossible. He’d had enough trouble finding me. How would he find Loulou and the colt as the storm worsened. And how would they survive that long?

“Stop trying to think of another way, because there isn’t one,” I said. “There is only my way. Grab the rope now and make a halter and put it on Loulou. Every moment that we stay here and discuss it we only put ourselves in the path of the storm.”

Loulou must have known we were helping her. She didn’t object when Pierre stuck the rope halter on her head. Then he came back for me. I was freezing cold when he picked me up to lift me on to her back.

“Wait! what about the others?” I gestured across at the herd, standing knee-deep in the seawaters that were still rising.

“They will be fine, they are bred to weather such storms,” Pierre assured me. I think he was worried I would come up with a new plan to take all of them with us!

With me in his arms, Pierre searched the floodwaters for a suitable stick and in the dark murk of the sea, he snatched up a slender broken-off branch of a tree.

“Your riding crop,” he said. I reached out and took it, and it felt strange in my grasp since I had never been one to whip a horse before. I tucked the branch down my trousers so that I could use both hands to grip Loulou’s mane.

“Get me up on to her back now,” I told Pierre.

It was not elegant, I admit. Even though Loulou stood remarkably still, it took a shove and a push from Pierre to forcibly swing my dead right leg over the mare’s back so that I had one leg on each side and sat astride.