The Old City of Marseilles by Aleksandr Kuprin

That day, no matter how we tried, we were not able to find the way back to our hotel, The Port. We were as confused as blind puppies near the grandiose, silent Veauban fortifications; and for ten times or so, after having gone around in a circle, we returned to the same spot. Finally we chanced to meet a knot of intoxicated sailors. We politely asked them for directions, and immediately all of them -- some ten or fifteen -- painstakingly and obligingly escorted us to our very house.

I also recall another night. We were sitting in a Spanish bar, situated on one of the innumerable streets of the port -- among which streets, by the way, I could never orientate myself. A party of Englishmen had planted themselves solidly alongside of us -- probably they belonged to the aristocracy of ships: skippers, machinists, or boatswains -- or something of that sort. They were all well-grown, austere, stalwart men, with sunburnt, weather beaten, rough-skinned faces. One of them, a clean-shaven chap, with a head as bare as a billiard ball, lit a pipe. I recognized my favorite Maryland tobacco by the smell, and, lifting my hat slightly and turning toward the billiard ball, I asked: