I suppose they told you this so-called treasure is in the form of ingots and nuggets and pieces-of-eight and jewels-so-rich-and-rare, and all the rest of the bag of tricks borrowed from Stevenson's 'Treasure Island'?
They would!" She showed her disrelish for his flippant tone, by removing her hand from his arm.

But at once the faint hiss of a snake as it glided into the swamp from somewhere just in front of them made her clutch his wet sleeve afresh.

His hints as to the nature of the treasure had roused her inquisitiveness to a keen point.

Yet, remembering what he had said about her praiseworthy dearth of feminine curiosity, she approached the subject in a roundabout way.
"If it isn't gold bars and jewels and old Spanish coins, and so forth," said she, seeking to copy his bantering tone, "then I suppose it is illicit whiskey?
It would be a sickening anticlimax to find they were liquor-smugglers." "No," Brice reassured her, "neither Standish nor Hade is a bootlegger--nor anything so petty.

That's too small game for them.