Mail indexing and lost sent mail

since yesterday, mail has been repeatedly indexing, always getting stuck on one particular email and taking over 1/2 an hour each time before allowing access to the program. Finally, I was able to run a search and delete the offending email before the indexing hung. I assumed this would resolve the problem. But no. It still gets stuck at the exact same point.
On the next pass I selected rebuild mailbox on the sent mailbox as this is where the particular email was. Now all the sent mail foir that account is gone. Yet indexing still reports as stuck on the very same email as before.
How can I get my sent mail back? How can I stop this endless indexing?
G4/400, G4/dual 867   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

I am having same/similar problem with Mail 1.3.11 on 10.3.9. If I even open the Sent Mail box I just get the text that Mail is 'sorting messages' and in the right of the bar I get the spinning segmental timer but nothing happens. It says I have 400+ messages in the Sent folder but never lists them.
I cannot quit Mail either and have to Force Quit all the time. Sorry to say that I have started using Thunderbird with no problems but Mac Mail is my default mail app.
I click the segmental timer in top right of bar and up comes a list of active processes that are currently running. I click the big red Stop icons on this list but this doesn't stop them - things just grind to a halt. Mail doesn't quit/hang but just freezes.
Any ideas very greatly welcomed!

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