Gil Fernandes and Rui Pereira
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Olha este desleal o como paga O perjúrio que fez e vil engano: Gil Fernandes é de Elvas quem o estraga, E faz vir a passar o último dano: De Xerez rouba o campo, e quase alaga Com o sangue de seus donos Castelhano. Mas olha Rui Pereira, que com o rosto Faz escudo às galés, diante posto.
Look at this disloyal man and how he pays for the perjury he committed and his vile deception: it is Gil Fernandes of Elvas who destroys him and makes him suffer the final blow. He plunders the fields of Jerez and, Castilian, nearly floods them with the blood of their own masters. But look at Rui Pereira, who with his own face makes a shield for the galleys, standing placed in front.
The catalogue of Portuguese heroes continues. Gama's messenger points out Gil Fernandes de Elvas, who punishes a treacherous foe and ravages the fields of Jerez, and Rui Pereira, who shields the galleys with his own body.
The messenger keeps pointing down the line of Portuguese fighters, pairing an act of vengeance with an act of sacrifice. Gil Fernandes de Elvas repays a treacherous enemy for his broken oath, carrying the war onto Castilian soil at Jerez until the ground drinks the blood of its own lords. Then the eye turns to Rui Pereira, who does the opposite of plunder: he puts his body between the galleys and the enemy.
What a first reader can miss is how tightly the last two lines land. "Faz escudo" is not a metaphor stretched for effect; Rui Pereira really made a shield of himself, dying in front of the ships to save them. Camões sets that quiet, fatal gesture right after the flooded battlefield, so the stanza turns from a man who spills blood to a man who spends his own, and both are held up as the same kind of glory.
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