The Shore Answers in Fire
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Respondem-lhe da terra juntamente, Co'o raio volteando, com zunido; Anda em giros no ar a roda ardente, Estoura o pó sulfúreo escondido. A grita se alevanta ao céu, da gente; O mar se via em fogos acendido, E não menos a terra; e assim festeja Um ao outro, a maneira de peleja.
They answer back from the land at the same moment, with the wheeling flash and its whizzing sound; the burning wheel spins in circles through the air, and the hidden sulfurous powder bursts. The people's clamor rises to the sky; the sea was seen ablaze with fires, and no less the land; and so each side salutes the other, after the manner of a battle.
Canto 2. Gama's fleet, welcomed at friendly Melinde, exchanges an artillery-and-fireworks salute with the shore. Ship and land answer each other with cannon and flame, staged like a mock battle.
This stanza is pure spectacle: the shore answering the fleet's salute at Melinde with its own artillery and fireworks. Spinning wheels of fire, bursting powder, the crowd's shout going up, and both sea and land lit at once. Camões piles the verbs of explosion and noise so the reader almost hears the guns.
The key is the last line, "à maneira de peleja" — in the manner of battle. Everything violent here is friendly. The same cannon and gunpowder that make war are firing in welcome, and Gama's arrival at this Muslim port is greeted not with the hostility he met earlier at Mombaça but with festival. A first reader can take the fire and thunder for real combat and miss that the whole scene is a performance of war turned into a performance of joy.
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