I pulled a deal in Guayaquil, In an Inca silver mine; And before they found ’twas salted ground, I was safe in the Argentine.
Where I made short weight on the River Platte; I was running a freighter there. And I cracked a crib on a rich estate, Without even turning a hair.
But the thing that’ll double bar my soul, When it flaps at heaven’s doors, Was peddling booze to the Santa Cruz And Winchester forty-fours.
Made unafraid by my hellish aid, The drink crazed brutes came down And left a blazing, quivering mass Of a flourishing border town.
I then took charge of a smuggler’s barge, Down the coast from Yucatan! But she went to hell off Cristobal One night in a hurricane.
I got to shore on a broken oar, In the filthy shrieking dark, While the other two of the good ship’s crew Were converted into shark.
From a sunbaked cliff, I flagged a skiff, With a salt soaked pair of jeans, Then worked my way for I couldn’t pay On a fruiter to New Orleans.
It’s kind of a habit, the tropics— It gets you worse than rum; You get away and you swear you’ll stay, But they call and back you come.
Six short months went by before I was back there on the job Running a war in Salvador. With a barefoot black face mob.
A mob that made me general, Leading a “grand” revolt, And my only friend from start to end Was a punishing army colt.
I might have become their president, A prosperous man of means, But a gunboat came and spoiled my game With a hundred and ten marines.
So I awoke from my dream dead broke, And drifted from bad to worse, And sank as low as a man can go, Who walks with an empty purse.
But stars they say appear by day When you are down in the deep dark pit; My lucky star found me that way When I was about to quit.
Alone on a hot flea ridden cot, I was down with the yellow jack Alone in the bush and dammed near dead— She found me and brought me back.
In her eyes shone lights of empires gone, For her’s was the blood of kings— When she spoke her voice inspired high thoughts, And dreams of nobler things.
We were spliced in a Yankee meeting house In the land of your Uncle Sam, And I drew my pay from the U. S. A. For I worked on the Gatun dam.
Then the devil sent his right hand man, I might have suspected he would, And he took her life with a long, thin knife; Because—she was pure and good.