- Every morning Peekay gets up at five to head to boxing practice and piano lessons with Doc at the prison, which his mother allows only because she doesn't know about the boxing.
- Lieutenant Smit only lets Peekay practice with the medicine ball, and won't allow him to spar until he is strong enough to throw it over Klipkop's head. So every day Peekay practices throwing the heavy medicine ball for fifteen minutes and practices on the punching bag and the speedball, then hits the showers.
- Dee and Dum take to spending their Sunday afternoons off at Doc's cottage, cleaning it as if it were their own place.
- Marie, the nurse, has become one of Peekay's mother's disciples, and spends Wednesday afternoons at their house. She brings gifts of sweet potatoes, eggs, and other food from her farm, as well as tobacco leaf for his grandpa. The grandpa hates the tobacco, and lets it build up in his garden shed because he can't tell her he doesn't like it. He does use it to keep the aphids away from his roses, though.
- Geel Piet, a prisoner who is half-black, half-white, and therefore an outcast, has been in prison longer than he has been free. He is in charge of the black market at the prison, and sometimes talks to Doc and Peekay, but very carefully.
- One day, Peekay brings Doc a cactus specimen for the garden he is planting in prison. He lines the bucket he carries it in with a single tobacco leaf from his grandpa's shed. Geel Piet offers to take the cactus to the garden, and when he comes back he promises to help Peekay to become a great boxer.
- Peekay asks his grandpa about bringing tobacco into the prison, and they decide that they will send it to Doc with a note explaining how to use it as an insecticide to cover their tracks in case they are caught. How crafty.
- Geel Piet, meanwhile, becomes Doc's personal servant, and also starts taking care of Peekay's gym clothes and helping out as an assistant coach to the boxing squad.
- Lieutenant Smit agrees to let Geel Piet coach Peekay, but every now and then contradicts him to keep his authority.
- Peekay has his first fight with a bigger kid called Snotnose Bronkhorst, and Snotnose can't even land a punch. After one round Lieutenant Smit blows his whistle, and Peekay gets a round of applause from the team.
- Snotnose tries to punch Peekay in the head as he's walking away, but Peekay anticipates it, ducks, and lands an uppercut in Snotnose's solar plexus. Everyone laughs and cheers, including Geel Piet. Lieutenant Smit punches Geel Piet in the mouth and knocks him to the floor for getting too big for his britches.
- Snotnose catches Peekay on his way to school and beats the tar out of him, and so Peekay asks Geel Piet for some dirty tricks to use in such occasions. Geel Piet is reluctant, because he wants Peekay to be a pure boxer, but finally teaches him the "Sailor's Salute," or the "Liverpool Kiss," which is the same head butt that Jackhammer Smit had used on Hoppie.
- Since Peekay is so advanced in school, he is by far the smallest kid in his class. John Hopkins and Geoffrey Scruby start picking on him, trying to get him to fight. Geel Piet advises him, and he accepts the challenge, pretending to be frightened.
- He fights Hopkins and makes him cry within seconds, and all of the Boer kids are shocked that the tiny English rooinek can beat the bigger bully. Snotnose shows up and, after having encouraged Peekay before the fight with Hopkins, now offers to fight him. Peekay agrees and puts him to sleep with a Liverpool Kiss, making Peekay famous in the school.
- Peekay is the only English kid in school who can ever beat the Boers, so he is important for keeping a racial balance in the school and becomes a leader.
- In the meantime, the tobacco crop at Marie's farm fails and causes problem for the black market that Geel Piet, Doc, and Peekay are running in the prison. The services have extended to include sugar, salt, and letter-writing, but now without cigarettes the prisoners are going to be very unhappy.
- Geel Piet memorizes letters from the prisoners, and then dictates them to Doc, because he can't write himself. Doc then gives the letters to Peekay, who delivers them to Mrs. Boxall, the librarian. She sends them off in official library stationery, and she also sets up a clothing drive to send clothing to the neediest prisoner's families.
- Mrs. Boxall calls the prisoners the meat in the sandwich of an uncaring society and a vengeful state, so she names her clandestine charity the "Earl of Sandwich Fund." No one in the town questions it, and it becomes a very high-status organization in the town, raising money and even collecting cigarette butts, which are then converted into the prison tobacco supply. The townspeople assume it is for the war effort, so they are happy to give.
- When Peekay walks through the prison, the African work gangs chant songs in Zulu about someone called the "Tadpole Angel." He realizes that they are talking about him, but doesn't know why.
- When he asks Geel Piet about the Tadpole Angel, he finds out that the prisoners have named him this because they call Doc, who plays music in the quiet of the night, the frog, and so Peekay, his boy, is the tadpole. He is an angel because of the work he does bringing them supplies and helping them communicate with their families—isn't that sweet?
- Peekay also finds out the nicknames of other characters in the prison. For example, Klipkop is called "Donkey Prick" because he loves to use the longer rubber baton to beat the prisoners.