The Captain at Prayer
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Mas não vês quase já desbaratado O poder Lusitano, pela ausência Do Capitão devoto, que, apartado Orando invoca a suma e trina Essência? Vê-lo com pressa já dos seus achado, Que lhe dizem que falta resistência Contra poder tamanho, e que viesse, Por que consigo esforço aos fracos desse?
But do you not see the Lusitanian power almost already routed, through the absence of the devout Captain, who, drawn apart and praying, invokes the supreme and triune Essence? See him found in haste by his own men, who tell him that resistance is failing against so great a power, and that he should come, so that by his presence he might give courage to the faltering.
Aboard the returning fleet, Bacchus (disguised) urges the sea-nymphs and gods against the Portuguese, pointing out how vulnerable Gama's force is while the captain is away praying. Here he describes the Lusitanians nearly overrun during that absence.
Bacchus is stirring up the sea-gods against Gama, and his tactic here is simple: catch the Portuguese at their weakest moment. The captain has stepped away to pray to the Trinity, and in that gap the enemy presses. The stanza sets private devotion against public danger, then lets the men run to fetch their leader back.
What a first reader misses is the sneer inside the piety. Camões has the pagan god describe Christian prayer accurately, "the supreme and triune Essence," but the point Bacchus is making is that it leaves the army undefended. The tension is real to the poem: the captain who kneels is also the captain who is not on the wall, and the stanza does not resolve which matters more.
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