Mercury Points the Way to Melinde
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Vai-te ao longo da costa discorrendo, E outra terra acharás de mais verdade, Lá quase junto donde o Sol ardendo Iguala o dia e noite em quantidade; Ali tua frota alegre recebendo Um Rei, com muitas obras de amizade, Gasalhado seguro te daria, E, para a índia, certa e sábia guia.
Go on along the coast, ranging farther, and you will find another, truer land, there almost where the burning Sun makes day and night equal in length. There a King, gladly receiving your fleet with many acts of friendship, would give you safe welcome, and, for India, a sure and wise guide.
In a dream off the East African coast, the god Mercury steers Gama away from treacherous Mombasa toward a truer harbor, where a friendly king will welcome his fleet and supply a pilot for India.
This is a divine voice mapping the next leg of the voyage. A god pointing in a dream tells Gama to keep coasting past the harbor that just betrayed him, promising a "truer" land near the equator where day and night run even. There a king will take the fleet in with real friendship and hand over a pilot for India. It is a stanza of pure direction: sail on, and providence has arranged a welcome.
The thing a first reader misses is that the promised "sure and wise guide" is the hinge of the whole voyage. Camões folds the god's counsel over the actual history: at Melinde, Gama took on the Indian Ocean pilot who steered the ships across open water to Calicut in 1498. The "terra de mais verdade" is set against the false friendship of Mombasa a few stanzas back, so the reward for surviving treachery is not just a friendly port but the one man who knows the way east.
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