We smoothed the place with mattocks, and we took and blazed the tree,
Which marks yon where the gear is hid that none will ever see,
And we [laid aboard the ship] again, and south away we steers,
Through the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating in my ears.
I’m the last alive that knows it. All the rest have gone their ways,
Killed, or died, or come to anchor in the old Mulatas Cays,
And I go singing, fiddling, old and starved and in despair,
And I know where all that gold is hid, if I were only there.
It’s not the way to end it all. I’m old and nearly blind,
And an old man’s past’s a strange thing, for it never leaves his mind.