"And then the island was simply gone, swallowed up by a mountain of fog. As if it had never existed."
The group is leaving their loop island. All of the children are holding onto precious things from their home indicating that they are not ready to let go of it yet. By saying that it got swallowed up by a mountain of fog like it never existed foreshadows that the group will probably never return to their home again; things will never go back to be as they used to.
"I wondered: Find our way to where? It occurred to me that, in our rush to escape the island, I had only ever heard the children talk about reaching the mainland, but we’d never discussed what to do once we got there—as if the idea of actually surviving the journey in those tiny boats was so far-fetched, so comically optimistic, that planning for it was a waste of time."
After hours of rowing in tiny boats group finally reached the land. They are even lucky they survived so they never thought about what to do once they escape their loop. The novel is filled with moments of group being suspiciously lucky that when they finally reach Miss Wren she can't believe they made it this far. Key word is suspiciously because as we learn at the end their journey wasn't all luck.
"Miss Peregrine kept her eyes trained on the slate-gray sea. They were hard and black and contained unutterable sorrow. They seemed to say: I failed you."
Always a motherly figure in the eyes of the peculiar children, even to Jacob, he reads the ymbryne's look towards the sea as a look of sorrow. But, as we later discover that the ymbryne wasn't Miss Peregrine this scene gets a whole new meaning. Maybe it was an act or maybe the bird was looking out for something. Either way, it shows us that we can't always trust Jacob's narration; it is unreliable and limited with only his point of view as a character.
"“Everything happens for a reason,” I said. I couldn’t believe those words had come out of my mouth, but as soon as they were spoken I felt the truth of them, resonating in me loud as a bell."
Emma has a breakdown as things seem to go downhill for the group. She apologizes to Jacob for dragging him into the mess and he tells her this. Jacob is torn between missing his home and wanting to be a normal kid and being pressured by the role of a savior to the peculiar children. He is convinced that the reason he stayed with them is only Emma, but deep down he knows that after discovering the truth about himself he can never be a normal rich kid again and that is why he feels the truth of his words resonating in him loud as a bell.
