One of the fruits of Emancipation in the West Indian islands is the number of the ruins, either attached to the houses that remain or within a stone’s throw of them: ruined slaves’ quarters, ruined sugar-grinding houses, ruined boiling houses; often ruined mansions that were too expensive to maintain. Earthquake, fire, rain, and deadlier vegetation, did their work quickly.
-- Narrator (chapter 1)

Importance: These first lines of the novel set the atmosphere of darkness and decay that follows the children on their transcontinental journey. The abandoned sugar plantation that the Bas-Thorntons live in and those that surround them combine the same superficial sweetness and semi-obscured violence as the narrative as a whole. While this may be a story about children, set in the prim Victorian era, this jarring imagery foreshadows the bleak themes that Hughes ultimately explores.

If ever she went back to England, she could now say to people, ‘I have been...
-- Emily (chapter 1)