The Arrow in the Leg
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Da espessa nuvem setas e pedradas Chovem sobre nós outros sem medida; E não foram ao vento em vão deitadas, Que esta perna trouxe eu dali ferida; Mas nós, como pessoas magoadas, A resposta lhe demos tão tecida, Que, em mais que nos barretes, se suspeita Que a cor vermelha levam desta feita.
Out of the thick cloud, arrows and stones rain down on us without measure; and they were not flung to the wind for nothing, since I carry this leg wounded from that place. But we, as men who had been hurt, gave them back an answer so closely woven that the suspicion is they are taking the colour red away on more than their caps this time.
Gama, telling his voyage to the king of Melinde, describes the skirmish on the South African shore after Veloso's rash walk inland. Here the fighting turns on the Portuguese, and the captain himself is hit.
Gama is narrating his own ambush. The volley comes out of a cloud so thick it has no visible archers in it, and he measures its accuracy by his own body: this leg, the one he is standing on as he speaks. Then the Portuguese answer with crossbows and guns, and he drops into understatement — a reply "so tightly woven," red taken away on more than caps.
The thing a first reader slides past is who is talking. Camões has handed the poem to Gama for three cantos, so the wound is not the narrator's report but the speaker's evidence, produced in front of a foreign king he is trying to impress. "Desta feita" is barrack-room slang for "this round," and the grim joke about red dye is Gama's, not the poet's — the epic voice would not make it. The wound is also on the record: the historical Gama was hit in the leg at the Bay of St Helena, and Camões keeps the detail rather than smoothing his hero.
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