noon
On a frozen river near a certain Russian town , a gang of seven carpenters were hastily repairing an icebreaker which the townsfolk had stripped for firewood . That year spring happened to be late in arriving , and youthful March looked more like October , and only at noon , and that not on every day , did the pale , wintry sun show himself in the overcast heavens , or , glimmering in blue spaces between clouds , contemplate the earth with a squinting , malevolent eye . The day in question was the Friday in Holy Week , and , as night drew on , drippings were becoming congealed into icicles half an arshin long , and in the snow-stripped ice of the river only the dun hue of the wintry clouds was reflected . As the carpenters worked there kept mournfully , insistently echoing from the town the coppery note of bells ; and at intervals heads would raise themselves , and blue eyes would gleam thoughtfully through the same grey fog in which the town lay enveloped , and an axe uplifted would hover a moment in the air as though fearing with its descent to cleave the luscious flood of sound . Scattered over the spacious river-track were dark pine branches , projecting obliquely from the ice , to mark paths , open spaces , and cracks on the surface ; and where they reared themselves aloft , these branches looked like the cramped , distorted arms of drowning men .