The Laestrygonians by Aleksandr Kuprin — Read

Winter is setting in. One evening it began to snow, and during the night everything had become white, the embankment, the boats on the beach, the roofs, the trees. Only the water of the bay remains black and sombre, and splashes restlessly in this calm white frame.

All along the shores of Crimea -- at Anapa, Sudak, Kerch, Theodosia, Yalta, Balaklava, and Sebastopol -- the fishermen prepare for the white-sturgeon season. They clean the fishing-boots, enormous horse-leather boots reaching to the thigh, each weighing some twenty pounds; they repair their waterproof coats painted with yellow oil-paint, and their leather trousers; they mend sails and knit seines.