The Crew Cuts Him Off
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" Outro também dos doze em Alemanha Se lança, e teve um fero desafio Com um Germano enganoso, que com manha Não devida o quis pôr no extremo fio. " Contando assim Veloso, já a companha Lhe pede que não faça tal desvio Do caso de Magriço, e vencimento, Nem deixe o de Alemanha em esquecimento.
"Another of the twelve, too, threw himself into Germany, and had a fierce duel with a deceitful German who, by a trick he had no right to, tried to bring him to the last thread of his life." Veloso telling it this way, the crew is already asking him not to wander off like that from Magriço's story and his victory — and not to leave the German one forgotten either.
Veloso is telling the story of the Twelve of England during the long night watch. He starts to wander into a second episode — one of the twelve who went to Germany — and his listeners stop him.
The stanza catches a storyteller in the act of drifting. Veloso, four lines in, has already left Magriço behind and started a second adventure: another of the Twelve of England crossing into Germany for a duel against an opponent who fought dirty. His shipmates interrupt. Finish the first story, they say — but don't drop this one either. They want both, in order.
The phrase a first reader skims is "extremo fio." It is not a flourish for "the brink": the fio is the thread of a life, the one the Fates spin and cut, so the German was trying to bring him to the very end of it. And "manha não devida" carries the stanza's judgment — the trick wasn't owed, wasn't his to use. In a poem where Portuguese victories are earned in the open, winning by a debt you never held is the accusation that matters.
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