The Shore of Melinde Fills
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Enche-se toda a praia Melindana Da gente que vem ver a leda armada, Gente mais verdadeira, e mais humana, Que toda a doutra terra atrás deixada. Surge diante a frota Lusitana, Pega no fundo a âncora pesada; Mandam fora um dos Mouros que tomaram, Por quem sua vinda ao Rei manifestaram.
The whole Melinde shore fills with the people who come to see the joyful fleet — people truer and more humane than all those of the other land left behind. The Lusitanian fleet comes to anchor before the town; the heavy anchor takes hold on the bottom. They send one of the Moors they had captured out to shore, and through him they made their arrival known to the King.
Gama's fleet reaches Malindi on the East African coast. After the treachery of Mombasa, the crowd here is friendly, and the ships drop anchor and send a captured Moor ashore to announce them to the king.
This is an arrival stanza, and its whole job is relief. After the ambushes at Mombasa, the ships reach Malindi and find a crowd on the beach that is glad to see them. Camões marks the change with two plain comparatives — the people here are "truer" and "more humane" than any met before — and then does the concrete work of landfall: the fleet swings into position, the heavy anchor bites the seabed, and a prisoner is sent ashore as herald.
The detail a first reader skims past is who does the announcing. The Portuguese do not send one of their own to the king of Malindi; they send a captured Moor — a man taken by force at an earlier port — to declare their coming. The friendly welcome and the small act of coercion sit in the same sentence, and Camões does not comment on the seam. The whole poem's habit of praising the voyage while quietly recording its costs is already here, packed into a single ottava rima.
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