1, 2, 3

Well, son, [bad word] to the tropics, 
You heard all you had to do
Was sit in the shade of a coconut glade, 
While the dollars rolled in to you.

Now I started out to be honest,  
With everything on the square;
But the man can’t fool with the [bad word]  
In a crowd that won’t play fair.

So I pulled a deal down in Guayaquil,
 In an Inca silver mine
And before they found it was salted ground, 
I was safe in the Argentine.

But the thing that’ll double-bar my soul,
When it flaps at Heaven’s doors,
Was peddling booze to the Santa [bad word]  
And Winchester forty-fours.

I then took charge of a smuggler’s barge, 
Down the coast from Yucatan.
But she went to [bad word] off Christobal, 
One night in a hurricane.

I reached ashore on a broken oar,* 
In the filthy, stinking dark,
While the other two of the good ship’s crew, 
Were converted into shark.

From a sun baked cliff I flagged a skiff, 
With a salt soaked pair of jeans.
And I worked my way, for I couldn’t pay, 
On a [bad word] to New Orleans.

But their kind of habit, the tropics, 
It gets you worse [bad word] 
You’ll go away and you swear you’ll stay, 
But they call, and back [bad word] 

I was General Santiago Hicks 
at the head of a grand revolt,
And my only friend, from beginning to end, 
Was a punishing Army Colt.

I was very high, flea-ridden cot,
I was down with the yellowjack.
Alone in the bush and damned near dead, 
She found me and brought me back.

There was pride and grace in her young brown face,
For hers was the blood of Kings. 
And In her eyes shone the mistery of empires gone
from this world and things.

But the the devil sent his right hand man, 
As I often suspected he would,
And he took her life with a long, thing knife, 
because she was straight and good.

Through logwood swamps and chicle camps 
I hunted him many a moon,
till I found my man in a long pit-pen, 
in the edge of a blue lagoon.

The chase was o'er on the farthest shore
At the end of a two-years quest.
I left him there with a vacant stare 
and a dag in his chest.

Many give me one month to live – 
month or a year is the same;
I haven't the heart to play my part 
At the end of a losing game.

...