The Silver Roads of the Sea
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Mas já as agudas proas apartando Iam as vias húmidas de argento; Assopra-lhe galerno o vento, e brando, Com suave e seguro movimento. Nos perigos passados vão falando, Que mal se perderão do pensamento Os casos grandes, donde em tanto aperto A vida em salvo escapa por acerto.
But now the sharp prows went parting the watery roads of silver; a fair and gentle wind breathes upon them, with a soft and steady motion. Of the dangers now past they go talking, for the great events will scarcely slip from the mind — those from which, in such dire straits, a life escapes to safety by sheer chance.
After the perils off the East African coast, Gama's fleet now glides on calm water with a fair following wind, and the crew talks over the dangers they have just survived.
This is a breathing-space stanza. The storms and perils off the African coast are behind them, and Camões lets the fleet glide: sharp prows cut the sea, here called the "watery roads of silver," while a mild following wind pushes them along. The crew, safe at last, does what survivors do — they talk the danger over.
The quiet turn is in the closing sentence, which is really a maxim about memory. What fixes an event in the mind, Camões says, is not skill but the narrowness of the escape — a life saved "por acerto," by chance rather than seamanship. Under the calm surface he admits how much of the voyage's survival was luck, not Portuguese virtue. The convention is Virgilian (Aeneid 1.203, where recalling past hardship will one day please), but Camões bends it toward fortune's hand rather than the hero's.
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