Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,6

were white, all the mouths open, all breaths coming in gasps. People had begun making slits in the canvas with penknives to free those trapped underneath. A woman with small scissors was methodically cutting the lacings of a section of side-wall, tears streaming down her face. The efforts all looked puny, the task so immense.

Flora and Jack and Jimmy, I knew, had all been in the part of the tent which had collapsed.

A horse was whinnying nearby and kicking wood, and it was with fresh shock that I realised that the noise was coming from the horsebox itself. There was a horse in there. Inside.

With stiff legs I went along to the standing section of tent, going in through a gap where other people had come out. The second pole stood upright, the potted chrysanthemums bright round its foot. There were many scattered and broken glasses, and a few people trying to lift up the folds of the heavily fallen roof, to let the trapped crawl from under.

‘We might make a tunnel,’ I said to one man, and he nodded in understanding, and by lifting one section only, but together, and advancing, he and I and several others made a wide head-high passage forward into the collapsed half, through which about thirty struggling people, dazedly getting to their feet, made their way out upright. Many of their faces and hands were bleeding from glass cuts. Few of them knew what had happened. Two of them were children.

One of the furthest figures we reached that way was Flora. I saw the red wool of her dress on the ground under a flap of canvas and bent down to help her: and she was half unconscious with her face to the matting, suffocating.

I pulled her out and carried her down to the free end, and from there gave her to someone outside, and went back.

The tunnel idea gradually extended until there was a ring of humans instead of tent poles holding up a fair section of roof, one or two helpers exploring continuously into the edges until as far as we could tell all the people not near the horsebox itself were outside, walking and alive.

The horsebox…

Into that area no one wanted to go, but my original tunneller and I looked at each other for a long moment and told everyone to leave if they wanted to. Some did, but three or four of us made a new, shorter and lower tunnel, working towards the side of the horsebox facing the standing section of the tent, lifting tautly stretched canvas to free people still pinned underneath.

Almost the first person we came to was one of the Arabs who was fiercely vigorous and at any other time would have seemed comic, because as soon as he was released and mobile he began shouting unintelligibly, producing a repeating rifle from his robes and waving it menacingly about.

All we wanted, I thought: a spray of terrified bullets.

The Sheik, I thought…. Standing against the side wall, so that his back should be safe.

We found two more people alive on that side, both women, both beyond speech, both white-faced, in torn clothes, bleeding from glass cuts, one with a broken arm. We passed them back into comfort, and went on.

Crawling forward I came then to a pair of feet, toes upwards, then to trouser legs, unmoving. Through the canvas-filtered daylight they were easily recognisable; pinstripe cloth, navy blue.

I lifted more space over him until I could see along to the buttoned jacket and the silk handkerchief and a hand flung sideways holding a glass in fragments. And beyond, where a weight pressed down where his neck should have been, there was a line of crimson pulp.

I let the canvas fall back, feeling sick.

‘No good,’ I said to the man behind me. ‘I think his head’s under the front wheel. He’s dead.’

He gave me a look as shattered as my own, and we moved slowly sideways towards the horsebox’s rear, making our tunnel with difficulty on hands and knees.

Above us, inside the box, the horse kicked frantically and squealed, restless, excited and alarmed no doubt by the smell; horses were always upset by blood. I could see no prospect all the same of anyone lowering the ramps to let him out.

We found another Arab, alive, flat on his back, an arm bleeding, praying to Allah. We pulled him out and afterwards found his rifle lying blackly where he’d been.

‘They’re mad,’ said my companion.

‘It didn’t save their master,’ I