A Tale of Two Tunnels: A Romance of the Western Waters — Themes and Context

A Robbery and Its Aftermath

The catalog lists this as a pirate story, but the excerpts show no piracy. Instead, the central crime is a street robbery in Cannon Street. Captain Jackman loses the owners' money—fifteen hundred pounds in gold and paper—and gives chase without thinking to recover his bag. He blames a seaman shipped at Calcutta who had 'given him trouble all the way home.' The incident is related to the owners as a story, and the text leaves room for doubt: Jackman saw only 'outline enough of the flying figure to guess that it was he.' The robbery sets the plot in motion, but its truth is uncertain from the excerpts alone.

The Devil's Walk and a Father's Refusal

The title's 'two tunnels' remain unexplained in the excerpts, but a cave called the Devil's Walk appears. Commander Conway, Ada's father, sneers that Jackman might 'hire the Devil's Walk, and spend a little money on decorating it, and support my daughter on the sixpences you take.' The cave seems a place of ill repute or low amusement. Conway refuses consent to the marriage, demanding to know Jackman's 'antecedents, connections, career.' Jackman offers only that he is a poor man with 'a brilliant scheme.' The father's prejudice against a merchant-service son-in-law is clear, and he storms out, leaving the lovers to contemplate 'the other way.'

Ada Conway's Determination

Ada Conway is no passive heroine. She lays her hand 'with fine grace upon the captain's shoulder' and tells her father, 'I love him, and we shall be married.' When Jackman whispers of 'the other way'—likely elopement—she quickly proposes they walk into town to 'arrange at our hearts' will as we go.' The narrator notes that Conway, like all fathers of 'an active, determined daughter who would marry a bagman sooner than remain unwedded,' can only gesticulate and say no. The excerpts also introduce a retired pilot, Mr. Leaddropper, with 'very arched legs' and 'a full August moon of face,' who observes the couple with curiosity.

The excerpts leave key questions open: What are the two tunnels? Is Jackman's story of the robbery true? What is his 'brilliant scheme'? Readers should attend to the gap between the catalog's 'pirate' label and the actual content—a romance of secrecy, a suspicious theft, and a father's opposition. The narrative voice, with its arch asides and vivid minor characters, rewards close attention to its ironies.

I found myself thinking of W. Clark Russell's intercepted lovers, their desperate sweetness echoing in hidden caves, when I stumbled upon a much older, saltier tale. There is a similar undertow of recklessness in that other world of coastal treachery and stolen jewels, though it trades romance for cutlass and flame. Both feel haunted by secret waters. I wonder if I might revisit Blackbeard; Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. — A Reader’s Guide alongside it, someday soon.