The Treasure of the Bucoleon — Story, Setting & Ideas

Dialect and Vernacular in Dialogue

Smith distinguishes his characters through their speech patterns. The narrator Jack uses standard American English, while Hugh's dialogue is peppered with contractions and clipped phrases like "Always raggin'" and "Nobody can make money any more." Betty King's speech is more polished but still informal: "It's very funny." The most striking vernacular appears in the Gypsy characters. The girl's exclamation, "He would have had the other one too if his friend had been as swift. Heh, foster-father, he has the makings of a great thief!" uses a rhythmic, almost poetic syntax. The Old One's response, "Be still, girl! You jabber like a crow," employs a simile grounded in natural observation. Watkins, the hapless victim, speaks in a Cockney-inflected whine: "Oh, Mister Nikka, sir... Not that, sir. There wasn't anything said about me belt, sir." This variety of dialects creates a layered social world without explicit exposition.

Sensory and Physical Description

Smith's descriptive passages emphasize tactile and visual details. The courtyard is "cluttered with bales of goods and boxes" and features "a broken wall, partially built over by a structure of moldy brick." The girl's appearance is rendered in vivid physical terms: "Her hair was a tumbled heap of midnight, and her eyes were great glowing depths of passion. Her shapely legs were bare almost to the knee, and her flimsy bodice scarcely covered her." The chase scene relies on kinetic language: "Hugh sprinted and lunged into Watkins, knocking him against a house-wall" and "Nikka overhauled Watkins and toppled him over with every appearance of ruthless brutality." Smith also uses sound effects sparingly but effectively, such as the knife "whistled down" and the hinge that "creaked." These details ground the action in a palpable reality.

Narrative Voice and Foreshadowing

The first-person narrator, Jack Nash, maintains a wry, self-aware tone. He describes the pink envelope as holding "the key to destiny" and later reflects on his own naivety: "never dreaming that I held the key to destiny in my hand." This technique creates dramatic irony, as the reader knows more than the narrator at the moment of action. Smith also uses the narrator's asides to build suspense. When Jack says, "I wish I was not tied down to an architect's drawing-board," it sets up his eventual departure for Constantinople. The author's choice to have Nikka translate conversations (as noted in a footnote) acknowledges the linguistic barriers within the story, adding a layer of authenticity. The narrative voice remains consistent, blending colloquial observations with moments of heightened emotion, such as when Jack describes the girl's "unconsciously regal air."

Structure of Action and Dialogue

Smith alternates between rapid action sequences and extended dialogue to control pacing. The fight scene with Watkins is a flurry of verbs: "sprinted," "lunged," "overhauled," "toppled," "menaced," "emptied," "ripped." The dialogue that follows is equally brisk, with Watkins's protests and Nikka's terse commands. In contrast, the earlier scene in the studio uses dialogue to convey character relationships and backstory. Uncle Vernon's formal speech about "the upheavals of the war and the occupation of the city by Christian garrisons" contrasts with Hugh's bluntness. Smith also uses the Gypsy girl's dialogue to reveal her admiration for Nikka: "This is the one... he ran like that stallion we had from the Arab of Nejd." The author's structural choices—such as the chapter titles like "The Cable from Hugh's Uncle" and "The Fight in the Gunroom"—signal key plot points while the prose itself focuses on immediate sensory experience.

Readers attentive to Smith's authorial choices will notice how he uses diction to signal class, nationality, and temperament. The contrast between the polished speech of the wealthy uncle and the rough argot of the Gypsies creates a social map of the novel's world. Smith's descriptive style favors the concrete over the abstract, grounding the adventure in physical details. The narrative voice, though first-person, maintains a consistent ironic distance that invites the reader to share in the narrator's discoveries. These elements together shape a story that is as much about the texture of its telling as about the treasure hunt itself.