He ran to the tiller and brought it right over. The boat scarcely moved, paralysed now by the net, in conjunction with the force of the current and the wind.

Young Javel had sunk to his knees, his teeth clenched and his face haggard. His brother returned to see no one used the knife.

‘Wait! wait!’ he said. ‘Lower the anchor first!’

The anchor was released and the whole chain extended to the full. They then began to heave at the capstans to loosen the trawler lines. Finally these slackened and from them the crew disengaged the arm, now inert inside its bloodied woollen sleeve.

Young Javel was near senseless. His pea-jacket removed, a terrible sight was revealed. The flesh was crushed to a pulp from which blood was spurting as if from a pump. The man looked at his arm and murmured, ‘Finished.’

As he continued to haemorrhage a pool of blood on to the deck, one of the sailors cried: ‘He’ll bleed to death! Quick! Tie the vein!’

Using thick brown tarred thread, they laced the limb over the wound as tightly as they could. The bleeding diminished and finally stopped altogether. Young Javel got up. His arm dangled at his side. Grasping it with the other hand, he turned it over and shook it. Everything was broken. The flesh was hanging on by the muscles alone. He looked at it with a sad, reflective gaze, then sat down on a furled sail while his mates advised him to keep the wound wet so as to avoid gangrene.

They put a bucket beside him so that he could keep dipping a glass into it and bathe the horrible wound with a constant trickle of clear water.

‘You’d be better off below, mate,’ said his brother.

Young Javel went down but returned after an hour, wanting company. Besides, he preferred to be out in the fresh air. He sat down again on his sail and continued to bathe his arm.

It was a good catch. Wide, white-bellied fish thrashed next to him in spasms of death, while he went on soaking his own pulverized flesh.

Just as they were about to reach Boulogne, the wind began to buffet them once more, and the little ship ran wildly before it, every lurch and crash a fresh torture for the injured man. Night fell and the storm still raged till daybreak. As the sun rose, England was in sight, but since the sea was less rough now, they turned into the wind and headed for home.

Towards evening, young Javel called his mates and showed them threads of black where the part of his limb no longer attached to him was beginning to develop a nasty, putrid look.

The sailors looked and gave advice.

‘Looks like the black to me,’1 was one opinion.

‘Needs salt water putting on it,’ declared another.