Ishmael reflects as he rises from bed that his humorous treatment the night before by the landlord who sold him half of a cannibal harpooner’s bed without informing said cannibal was a good joke and a sign of an amicable nature.

“And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think.”

He came downstairs into the bar-room to see it full of the men he would soon be shipping with, and spent some time describing how one could tell how many months at sea a man had been by the “hue” of his skin. His eyes fall on Queequeg as he muses about a sailor’s tan.

“But who could show a cheek like Queequeg? Which barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.”

“Grub, ho!” cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast.”

Ishmael wonders at the character of men who have suffered hardships and seen barbarous shores. Then as he reflected he noticed how there was scant boasting by these rugged whalemen, and that they even seemed shy and embarrassed, and almost all “maintained a profound silence.”

Ishmael looked around at the breakfast table where Queequeg reached over other diners with his harpoon to spear his beefsteaks, taking the measure of these men.

“Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and dueled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen.”

Ishmael finally concludes his estimation of whalemen, while considering the impropriety of Queequeg dining with his harpoon and spearing steaks over his shipmate’s heads, “But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and everyone knows that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.”

The meal done, Ishmael “sallied out for a stroll.”

Early 19th Century gentility was widely regarded as the trait of the hereditary officer class in the European and American military, with naval and army officers expected to be cool under fire to a degree that 21st Century military men would regard as an insane and wasteful disregard for their lives.