“Jill ran her fingers down the tough golden beard of history. It was fine being there, but she wished there had been boards on the floor. Professor Flint was late; it was already three o’clock. ‘Chow down!’ shouted the corporal, and all the men ran into the eating quarters. ‘Very tropical weather, Sergeant,’ said ‘Dutch,’ an unusual man who had been hanging around the camp a lot recently. The cord snapped, having suddenly come undone, and the hawsers slipped out onto the blue, frothy waters of Lake Superior.”

(first paragraph of Chapter 1 (“The Ring of Destiny”) of Kenneth Koch’s The Red Robins; p. 45 in his Collected Fiction.)