Breakfast — Moby-Dick

Ishmael follows Queequeg downstairs and greets Peter Coffin with no malice, though the landlord skylarked hard about the bedfellow. A good laugh is scarce, Ishmael decides, and a man who can afford to be laughed at may hold more substance than the room guesses. The bar fills with brown, brawny whalemen in monkey jackets, and Ishmael reads their cheeks like calendars: musky sun-toasted pear for three days ashore, lighter satin wood for a longer fade, bleached tropic tawn for weeks on land. Queequeg alone looks like the Andes in one face, zone by zone of contrasting climate, as if his body kept every voyage it ever made.

"Grub, ho!" Coffin cries, and the boarders file to breakfast. Ishmael braces for whaling yarns and gets instead a profound, embarrassed silence. These are bashful bears, timid warrior whalemen who will board a stranger whale on the high seas without winking yet glance sheepishly at their own trade over ham and eggs, as though parlor manners were a harder hunt than Leviathan. Ishmael remembers famous travellers who crossed Siberia or Africa and still lacked assurance in company; courage in one room does not transfer to the next by magic.

Queequeg refuses the table's anxiety. He sits at the head cool as an icicle, harpoon in hand, reaching over men's heads to grapple rare beefsteaks toward him while coffee and rolls go untouched. The breach of breeding is flagrant; the composure makes it almost genteel. When the meal ends he withdraws to light his tomahawk-pipe, hat on, digesting in peace, and Ishmael strolls out into the Sabbath street wondering what New Bedford will look like now that he has seen who owns the breakfast room without asking permission.