At sea is a short story by Guy de Maupassant, published in 1883. A fishing boat ran aground, five men perished including the Javel boss. Eighteen years before, this Javel had sacrificed his brother's arm in terrible circumstances. At the time, they trawled. Javel was the owner of the trawler. Staggering, his brother gets stuck in the rope holding the trawl. Javel, by avarice, refuses a sailor to cut the cable of the trawler. He tries to bring the boat to the wind, then to anchor, but it's too late. When one releases his brother, his arm is a bloody mass from which the blood comes out to big broth. When the gangrene attacks his arm, his brother cuts himself the last pieces of flesh that hold his arm. When they returned to port the next day, he buried his arm in a small coffin and when asked, he said, "If my brother had wanted to cut the trawl, I would still have my arm for sure, but he was looking at his property ".