Run aground
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Instantes depois o bote achou-se encalhado em um banco de areia. Apeei-me imediatamente, e tomando um escalér na praia, fui em soccorro dos dois navegantes que em vão forcejavão por safar a pequena embarcação.
Moments later the boat found itself grounded on a sandbank. I dismounted at once, and taking a skiff from the beach, went to the rescue of the two boaters who were vainly struggling to free the little craft.
The little boat runs aground — 'encalhado em um banco de areia' — and the moment of freedom on the water turns to helplessness, a small emblem of Isaura's whole situation: liberty is always provisional, always liable to strand. Álvaro's leap to the rescue, seizing a skiff and rowing out, is the chivalric turn of the romance, the knight-errant proving himself. But note the reversal from Cap IX: there, Miguel's 'braço vigoroso' rowed Isaura to safety; here father and daughter are stuck, 'forcejavão por safar' the craft in vain, and it is a stranger who comes to help. Their careful self-sufficiency fails, and rescue arrives — as it will keep arriving in this novel — from an outsider whose motives Isaura cannot yet gauge. Every helping hand is also a hand that now knows where she is.
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