The Cunning Messenger's Assurance
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Pergunta-lhe depois, se estão na terra Cristãos, como o piloto lhe dizia; O mensageiro astuto, que não erra, Lhe diz, que a mais da gente em Cristo cria. Desta sorte do peito lhe desterra Toda a suspeita e cauta fantasia; Por onde o Capitão seguramente Se fia da infiel e falsa gente.
Then he asks him whether there are Christians in the land, as the pilot had been telling him; the cunning messenger, who never errs, tells him that most of the people believe in Christ. In this way he banishes from his breast all suspicion and wary imagining, so that the Captain securely puts his trust in the faithless and false people.
Off Mozambique, the disguised Moorish pilot fields Gama's questions. Asked whether Christians live in these lands, the sly messenger answers that most people here believe in Christ — a lie that lulls the Captain into trusting a treacherous host.
The stanza is a small machine of deception. Gama, still hunting for fellow Christians, questions the pilot; the disguised Moorish messenger answers with the one word that will disarm him — that these people believe in Christ. The lie works exactly as intended: it clears the Captain's chest of every doubt and leaves him trusting the very people plotting against him.
What a first reader misses is how the grammar quietly takes the Captain's guard away from him. "Desterra" — banishes, exiles — is a violent verb doing gentle-seeming work: the suspicion is driven out of him as if it were the enemy, when in fact the suspicion was his only defense. The stanza's closing rhyme sets "seguramente" (securely) against "infiel e falsa gente" (faithless and false people), so the reader sees the trap snap shut a beat before Gama does.
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