- Peekay wakes up in his train compartment and Hoppie takes him to breakfast.
- Peekay confesses to Hoppie that he is not going to be the next welterweight contender, as Hoppie keeps insisting, because he is just a rooinek. Hoppie realizes that this is why the kids at school pick on Peekay, and tells him that's his reason to fight, and that's why he'll be a champ.
- In the breakfast car, the waiter, Gert, takes bets on Hoppie's fight. Hoppie tells Peekay to bet his emergency shilling on Hoppie. He does so, but is pretty nervous because he isn't sure if it counts as an emergency.
- Hoppie takes Peekay into town to a shop run by an Indian family, and talks them into trading the gigantic shoes for some that fit plus nine pence. Hoppie has the attitude that Indians, or, as he calls them, coolies (another derogatory term—starting to see a pattern here?), are not very trustworthy.
- When Mr. Patel, the shopkeeper, realizes that Hoppie is Kid Louis, his boxing name, he returns the nine pence and tells him that he has bet ten pounds on him in tonight's fight. He also gives Peekay a shilling for good luck, replacing his grandpa's emergency shilling. And Hoppie said Indians were not trustworthy—let's hope this shopkeeper taught him a lesson.
- Hoppie introduces Peekay to Nels and Bokkie, his seconds (the people who help him out in the ring) and they go into a billiard room for some trash talk with his opponent, Jackhammer Smit.
- Jackhammer is a giant, and really mean. He says that since Hoppie's boxing name is Kid Louis, after the black boxer Joe Louis, he is a kaffir lover. Then he threatens to kill Hoppie as he and Peekay leave the room. Uh oh.
- Hoppie knows that it will be boiling hot that night during the fight, so he has a plan and asks Peekay to make him drink a glass of water every ten minutes, whether he wants to or not, so that he won't dehydrate during the fight.
- Peekay learns who Joe Louis was, and Hoppie tells him that because he was a smart fighter, he is a black man who is white on the inside, not a kaffir. Peekay is learning all sorts of racism on his journey.
- Hoppie tells Peekay that he'd like to marry Anna, the waitress, but that he'd been called up to fight in the war so he couldn't ask her yet.
- Peekay tells Hoppie about Adolf Hitler and his march to the sea, and Hoppie tells him that even though the English had done a lot of terrible things, that Hitler is a bad, bad man who had to be fought.
- Peekay grabs his suckers and they head to the fight.