Mercury's Command to Sail
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Isto Mercúrio disse, e o sono leva Ao Capitão, que com mui grande espanto Acorda, e vê ferida a escura treva De uma súbita luz e raio santo. E vendo claro quanto lhe releva Não se deter na terra iníqua tanto, Com novo espírito ao mestre seu mandava Que as velas desse ao vento que assoprava.
This Mercury said, and lifts the sleep from the Captain, who wakes in great alarm and sees the dark shadow wounded by a sudden light and holy ray. And seeing clearly how much it matters to him not to linger so long in the wicked land, with new spirit he ordered his master to set the sails to the wind that was blowing.
Mercury, having warned Gama in a dream against the treacherous welcome awaiting at Mombasa, departs. Gama wakes in alarm and at once orders his pilot to set the sails to the wind.
The stanza turns a divine warning into an order. Mercury's dream lifts away, the Captain jolts awake, and the whole cabin is described through a single image: darkness itself is wounded by the god's light, as if the holy ray cut the night open. That flash is not just illumination but resolve, and by the last couplet Gama has already translated the omen into a command to his pilot.
What a first reader misses is how fast fear becomes action. There is no deliberation between waking and ordering the sails set; the "terra iníqua" is Mombasa, whose ruler (goaded by Bacchus) has laid a trap, and Camões wants Gama's obedience to the god to look instant and total. The verb "releva" is the quiet hinge, weighing what matters against the danger of staying, before the ship simply moves.
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