The family returns home after the assembly. Ilse verbally spars with the General over Moby-Dick. Ilse, still feisty and confrontational from the assembly, points out the moral dilemma the character Ishmael faces in deciding between the angry extremism of Ahab and the gentle stoicism of the harpooner Queequeg. After Leonore sings at the piano (Ilse declines to entertain the group), the family retires. The General is set to depart in two days. Marnus, intrigued by the General’s jagged scar, wants to see it once more. He rolls back the rug in his room and squints through the knothole into the General’s bedroom below. He is shocked to see what he thinks is the reflection of his sister. The General is in his underwear. Marnus cannot be sure, however—the light is bad and his view obscured.

The next morning, Marnus is off to his last day of school. His teacher announces that an essay of his on a trip he made to the National Museum has been selected as best in class and appears in the school’s annual, which the teacher distributes. At home, Marnus’s mother makes a fuss over the honor. Frikkie will stay with the family until they leave for their summer holiday in two days.