The Winds Surrender
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Assim foi; porque, tanto que chegaram A vista delas, logo lhe falecem As forças com que dantes pelejaram, E já como rendidos lhe obedecem. Os pés e mãos parece que lhe ataram Os cabelos que os raios escurecem. A Bóreas, que do peito mais queria, Assim disse a belíssima Oritia:
So it happened; for the moment the winds came within sight of the nymphs, the strength they had fought with before failed them, and already, like men surrendered, they obeyed. Their feet and hands seemed bound by the tresses that darken the very rays of the sun. And to Boreas, the one her heart most wanted, the beautiful Orithyia spoke this way:
Venus has sent her sea-nymphs to intercept the winds that are wrecking Gama's fleet. Here the winds, catching sight of the nymphs, simply stop fighting — and Orithyia turns to speak to Boreas, the north wind who once carried her off.
The storm ends without a blow. Camões has spent the whole canto building the winds into a force that could break Gama's fleet, and then closes the fight in one line: they see the nymphs and their strength simply stops working. The binding is imaginary — 'parece que' — but the surrender is real, and it is voluntary in the way surrenders often are not.
What a first reader misses is that Orithyia is not a stranger to Boreas. In Ovid, Boreas carried her off by force when persuasion failed. Camões puts her here as the one who speaks to him, and the verb is 'queria' — she wanted him. The abduction has become a marriage, and the wind that once took what it wanted now takes an order from the woman he took. That is why the nymphs work: Venus is not sending seduction against the storm, she is sending wives.
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