The slave-master relationship has dramatically changed.
The so-called masters fall victims to the blacks’ resentment.
Their few servants leave them (Sass and others).
In the first pages, Annette has lost her horse and her power with it.
The have become white “cockroaches”.
Even such close friends as Antoinette and Tia have split up.
They swopped dresses as they parted: it is the symbol of the reversal of roles.

The former slaves run the “masters” out of the property.
They form a compact army of aggressive assailants (l. 1); a whole mass of anonymous faces (l. 2).
Former servants are siding with the enemy:

• Myra who was supposed to look after Pierre ;
• Maillote, a former friend of Christophine’s ;
• Tia, Antoinette’s former friend, now a vindictive assailant ;
• Sass who has just run away ;

The blacks seem ready to kill:

• Throw stones ;
• Carry flambeaux to burn the home down, symbol of the white’s domination over them ;

They actually kill Pierre.
Some are bent to kill all the whites.
l. 28 – 32: “the man with the machete wants to mash the centipede.”
They are prevented from doing so by Annette Cosway (l. 34 – 41), by their superstitious belief in obeah and by the parrot’s death (l. 15 – 19).

The so-called masters are reduced to running away in a panic:

• Antoinette shuts her eyes and refuses to knowledge the truth ;
• Even boastful Mr. Mason has no solution but praying ;
• Annette is angry and scared for her and Pierre’s safety : they are utterly helpless ;

The white world of Jamaica has thus collapsed.
The former masters are expelled from their destroyed property.
Coulibri is burned to ashes.
The scene looks “like sunset” (l. 47).

Nothing will be left of Antoinette’s world (l. 48).
The garden, her refuge, will be left behind, including the painting of the Miller’s daughter which represents what she dreamed of being.

Only the “blackened walls and the mounting stone” (l. 50) remain. The walls stand for their collapsing civilization / past. The stone is a pathetic symbol  of their lost power (relic).

The fire symbolically purifies a decaying world. It’s a moral retribution for their past misdeeds, i.e. slavery.
To the Cosways / Masons it means destruction and damnation.
Mr. Mason will soon die, as will Annette Cosway.
The fire triggers Annette’s collapse into madness and death.
It killed the degenerate heir of their family, Pierre.
It means the end of the Cosway name.
To Antoinette it means entering a world of solitude.
She will become an orphan, belonging to neither world.
She will be abandoned by her kin and sent to a convent.
She is and will be scorned and rejected by the blacks, even by the half-caste.

She tries to take refuge with Tia, running toward her (l. 53). However, Tia a representative of the black world, a member of the assailing army, rejects her.

She wounds her in the face (l. 55). Even a near sister denies Antoinette dress to the black world.

The tears on her “sister’s” face, the blood on hers foreshadow her future life made of tears and blood.

Coco’s destiny had already foreshadowed her. Like Coco her wings are “clipped”, she can’t fly away.