Guilt Hears an Ambush
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A celeuma medonha se alevanta No rudo marinheiro que trabalha; O grande estrondo a Maura gente espanta, Como se vissem hórrida batalha; Não sabem a razão de fúria tanta, Não sabem nesta pressa quem lhe valha; Cuidam que seus enganos são sabidos, E que hão de ser por isso aqui punidos.
The dreadful clamor rises among the rough sailors as they toil; the great din terrifies the Moorish crew, as if they were watching a horrid battle. They do not know the reason for so much fury, nor, in this sudden haste, who might help them; they suppose their deceits have been found out, and that for it they are to be punished here.
The nymphs have wrenched Gama's ship back from the hidden reef where the treacherous Mombasa pilots meant to wreck it. The Moorish crew, not knowing why the vessel suddenly veers, panics in the noise of the working sailors.
The noise here is nothing but ordinary work: sailors hauling on ropes, shouting over a ship that has abruptly turned. But the Moorish crew, who had guided Gama toward a hidden reef, hear their own guilt in it. The racket sounds to them like the opening of a battle, and they leap to a single conclusion, that their plot is exposed and their execution is at hand.
What a first reader misses is that the panic is pure dramatic irony. The Portuguese know nothing; it was Venus's sea-nymphs, in the stanza before, who physically shoved the ship off its deadly course. The Moors are convicted by no one but themselves, reading a death sentence into rigging-noise. Camões lets conscience do the accusing, and in the next stanza the pilots betray their own treachery by diving overboard.
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