The Moor's Well-Timed Lie
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E entrando assim a falar-lhe a tempo e horas A sua falsidade acomodadas, Lhe diz como eram gentes roubadoras, Estas que ora de novo são chegadas; Que das nações na costa moradoras Correndo a fama veio que roubadas Foram por estes homens que passavam, Que com pactos de paz sempre ancoravam.
And setting about to speak to him thus, at a time and hours suited to his falsehood, he tells him how they were a thieving people, these who have now newly arrived; that from the nations dwelling along the coast a rumor came running that the coast had been robbed by these men who passed by, men who always anchored under pacts of peace.
Still at Mombasa, the treacherous Moor sent by the local king approaches Gama at a carefully chosen moment and slanders the Portuguese, claiming they are pirates who anchor under a pretense of peace.
The stanza is all machinery of deceit. The Moor picks his moment, "a tempo e horas / A sua falsidade acomodadas" — an hour fitted to the lie — and then reports the Portuguese to Gama as pirates: raiders who drop anchor claiming peace and then plunder the coast. Camoes keeps the slander at one remove, in reported speech ("Lhe diz como"), so we hear the accusation without the poem endorsing it.
What a first reader misses is that the charge is a mirror. The Moor accuses the Portuguese of anchoring under false pacts of peace while doing exactly that himself — he is the one whose friendliness is a mask. Camoes lets the enemy define piracy in the very stanza where the enemy is being most treacherous, so the reader, who knows the Moor is lying, is quietly invited to weigh how much of the description might, in another mouth, fit Portugal's own arrivals in the East.
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