You gentlemen can watch
while I'm scrubbing the floors
And I'm scrubbing the floors
while you're gawking
And maybe once
you're tip -manned
it makes you feel swell
On a ratty waterfront in
a ratty old hotel
And you nev er guess to
who you're talking
You never guess to who you're talking
Suddenly one night
there's a scream in the night
And you wonder what could that have been
And you see me kind of grinning
while I'm scrubbing,
an d you wonder what she got to grin.
And a ship, a black freighter,
with a skull on its masthead,
will be com ing in.
You gentlemen can say,
hey girl, finish the floors,
get upstairs, make the beds,
earn your keep here.
You toss me your tips
and look out at the ships,
but I'm counting your heads
while I make up the beds,
cause there's nobody gonna sleep here.
Tonight none of you will sleep here.
Then that night there's a bang
in the night
and you yell, who is that kicking up a row?
And you see me kind
of staring out the window
And you say,
what's she got to stare at now?
And the ship, the black freighter
Turns around in the harbor
Shooting guns from the bow
Then you gentlemen
can wipe off
that laugh from your face,
every building in town is a flat one.
Your whole stinkin' place will
be down to the ground,
only this cheap hotel's
standin' up safe and sound.
And you yell, why do
they spare that one?
And you say,
why do they spare that one?
All the night through with
the noise and to -do,
you wonder who's
the person lives up there.
Then you see me steppin' out
into the mornin',
lookin' nice, with a ribbon in my hair.
And the ship, the Black Freighter,
runs a flag up its masthead,
and the cheering's the air.
By noontime, the dark is all swarming
With men coming off of that
ghostly freighter.
They're moving in the shadows
where no one can see,
And they're chaining up people
and bringing them to me,
Asking me, kill them now or later,
Asking me, kill them now or later.
Noon by the clock,
and so still on the dock,
you can hear a foghorn miles away.
In that quiet of death,
I'll say, right now.
And they pile up the bodies,
and I'll say, That'll earn ya.
And the ship, the black freighter,
Disappears out to sea,
And on it is a me.