Moby-Dick

Ishmael goes on to describe the other two mates. Stubb, the second mate, is “calm and cool” in the face of danger—even when the whale is about to strike, as happens later in the narrative. A native of Cape Cod, Stubb is “inseparable” from his pipe, a feature as natural to him “as his nose.” Stubb is joined by Flask, the third mate, a native of Martha’s Vineyard, and a man who seems “personally affronted” by the whale, and whose courage in the fight takes a headlong form different both from Stubb’s coolness and from Starbuck’s reserve.

Ishmael names Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask the three “knights” of the Pequod, under the command of Ahab, and states that each knight takes out a whaling boat, when the whale is being tracked, and brings with him a harpooneer as a “squire,” or assistant, to hook the whale. Starbuck’s harpooneer is Queequeg; Stubb’s is Tashtego, a Native American from Martha’s Vineyard; and Flask’s is Daggoo, an African “savage.” Ishmael says that it is strange and worth remarking upon that Americans appear to provide the “brains” on the Pequod, and on many similar whaling ships, and non-whites the “brawn.” Ishmael calls men like Tashtego and Daggoo “isolatoes,” or men “of their own continent,” and says that another young boy on the ship, a black boy named Pip, is also of the company of the isolatoes, and will be described later in the story.