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" Assim que, deste porto nos partirmos Com maior esperança e maior tristeza, E pela costa abaixo o mar abrirmos Buscando algum sinal de mais firmeza. Na dura Moçambique enfim surgimos, De cuja falsidade e má vileza Já serás sabedor, e dos enganos Dos povos de Mombaça pouco humanos.
And so, once we had set out from this port with greater hope and greater sadness, and had opened the sea down along the coast, seeking some sign of firmer ground, we put in at last at harsh Mozambique — of whose falsehood and vile baseness you will already know, and of the deceits of the scarcely humane peoples of Mombasa.
Gama, still telling the voyage to the King of Melinde, reaches the point where his story rejoins ports his host already knows. The long unknown stretch is behind them; from here the coast has a name.
This is the stanza where Gama's story catches up with itself. The long tale he has been telling the King of Melinde now reaches the ports the King already knows about, so he stops narrating and starts summarizing: Mozambique, Mombasa, the treachery there. Já serás sabedor — you will already know this part — hands the rest back to his listener.
The pair in line 2 is the thing to notice: maior esperança e maior tristeza, both growing at once, not one replacing the other. The further south they get, the better their odds and the worse their losses. And firmeza in line 4 is doing double work — they are looking for solid land, and for something solid in the people they meet. They find neither, which is what lines 5 through 8 are for.
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