The Laestrygonians by Aleksandr Kuprin — Read

Probably since the Crimean War no steamer, except perhaps an occasional torpedo-boat on manoeuvres, has entered the narrow-mouthed, sinuous, and oblong Balaklava Bay. And really what business could bring steamers to this out-of-the-way fishing settlement, half village, half town? Its only cargo, fish, is bought up on the spot by middlemen and is carted to the markets of Sebastopol, thirteen versts away. It is also from Sebastopol that a few people come to spend the summer months at Balaklava, using for that purpose the mail-coach, which charges them fifty copecks for the trip. The small but desperately brave steam-tug, The Hero, which plies daily between Yalta and Alupka, panting like a fagged-out dog, and tossing and pitching in the slightest breeze as if caught in a hurricane, tried to establish passenger communication with Balaklava. But this attempt, repeated three or four times, resulted merely in a waste of time and coal. The Hero came and left empty. And the Balaklava Greeks, the distant descendants of the bloodthirsty Homeric Laestrygonians, standing on the landing-place with their hands in their pockets, greeted it and saw it off with cutting words, ambiguous advice, and stinging Godspeeds.

But during the siege of Sebastopol the charming pale-blue Balaklava Bay sheltered almost a quarter of the allied fleet. That heroic epoch has left some authentic traces at Balaklava, such as the steep road, which was cut by the English sappers in the ravine of Kefalo-Vrisi; the Italian cemetery, hidden among the vineyards on the top of the Balaklava hills, and the short plaster-of-Paris and bone pipes, which the allied soldiers smoked half a century ago, and which are unearthed from time to time by vineyard tillers.