Gifts and a False Welcome
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E por estes ao Rei presentes manda, Por que a boa vontade, que mostrava, Tenha firme, segura, limpa e branda; A qual bem ao contrário em tudo estava. Já a companhia pérfida e nefanda Das naus se despedia e o mar cortava: Foram com gestos ledos e fingidos, Os dous da frota em terra recebidos.
And by these men he sends presents to the King, so that he may keep firm, secure, clean and gentle the goodwill the King had shown — goodwill which was in fact quite the contrary in everything. Already the perfidious and abominable party was taking its leave of the ships and cutting across the sea: with glad and feigned gestures the two men from the fleet were received on shore.
At Mombasa, Gama sends presents to keep the king's professed goodwill firm — goodwill that is in fact the reverse. The treacherous Muslim party leaves the ships, and two of the fleet's men are rowed ashore into a smiling trap.
Gama, still trusting the welcome at Mombasa, sends gifts ashore to lock in a king's goodwill — and Camões piles up the qualities he hopes to secure: firme, segura, limpa, branda. Then line four flips the whole octave with a flat clause: it was the exact opposite in everything. The stanza is built as a trap, letting the reader share Gama's confidence for three lines before pulling it away.
What a first reader can miss is that both halves are already false, not just the king's. The "perfidious and abominable" party leaving the ships are the Muslim pilots Bacchus has turned against the Portuguese, and the smiling reception of Gama's two envoys is spelled out as ledos e fingidos — glad and feigned. Camões keeps the deceit visible to us while his sailors row cheerfully into it, the dramatic irony the poem needs to make Mombasa feel like a snare rather than a port.
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