The Captain's Orders
Read the full text in our reader
E não cuides, ó Rei, que não saísse O nosso Capitão esclarecido A ver-te ou a servir-te, porque visse Ou suspeitasse em ti peito fingido: Mas saberás que o fez, porque cumprisse O regimento, em tudo obedecido, De seu Rei, que lhe manda que não saia, Deixando a frota, em nenhum porto ou praia.
And do not think, O King, that our illustrious Captain failed to come out to see you, or to serve you, because he saw or suspected a false heart in you. But you shall know that he did it in order to fulfill the orders, obeyed in every point, of his own King, who commands him not to leave the fleet, abandoning it in any port or shore.
Book 2. Speaking before the friendly King of Melinde, Gama's envoy explains why the captain will not come ashore: it is no insult or suspicion, but obedience to his own King's standing command never to abandon the fleet.
Gama's spokesman soothes the King of Melinde, their first genuinely friendly host after the treachery at Mombasa. The captain's refusal to disembark, he insists, carries no insult and no suspicion of a "false heart"; it is simple obedience to a written command from Portugal that the fleet must never be left behind.
The knot to notice is the piled-up negatives — "não cuides... que não saísse" — the careful hedging of a diplomat who cannot afford to give offense yet cannot lower his guard either. And the word doing the real work is regimento: the king's sailing orders. Camões makes obedience to the absent Dom Manuel outrank even a gracious host's hospitality, so that discipline, not distrust, becomes the shield that keeps the ships whole.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Os Lusíadas 2.83 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Os Lusíadas — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Os Lusíadas 2.83 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/2.83/