Such a detailed description of a passing light effect created by a boat moving through night waters. Particularly original is that ‘onion-outlined’ churn.

‘A boat, its dark shape looking faintly ominous, sculled towards the island and broke the flimsy reflections to smithereens. The shards scattered round the boat’s track and widened to a flurried rout of gold brackets, their onion-outlined turnmoil separated by a band of darkness from the boat’s private commotion.’

Source: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, introduction by Michael Gorra, New York: New York Review of Books, 2006 (1958), p. 346