The Governor forbids the sailing
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Que nenhum torne à pátria só pretende O conselho infernal dos Maumetanos, Por que não saiba nunca onde se estende A terra Eoa o Rei dos Lusitanos. Não parte o Gama enfim, que lho defende O Regedor dos bárbaros profanos; Nem sem licença sua ir-se podia, Que as almadias todas lhe tolhia.
The infernal council of the Muslims intends only one thing: that no man return to his homeland, so that the King of the Portuguese may never learn how far the Eastern land extends. Gama, in the end, does not sail, for the Governor of the profane barbarians forbids it; nor could he leave without that man's permission, since he was withholding all the boats from him.
The Muslim council at Calicut plots to strand Gama so that Portugal will never learn the extent of the East. The Governor bars his departure and seizes every boat, leaving the fleet trapped in the harbor.
The stanza names the trap plainly. The Muslim advisers at Calicut do not want Gama dead so much as silenced: if no Portuguese ship gets home, Lisbon never learns the route or the reach of the East, and the sea road stays theirs. Camões frames it as a matter of knowledge, not just violence, and the Governor makes it concrete by impounding every almadia in the harbor.
What a first reader can miss is the quiet weight of "onde se estende / A terra Eoa" — the plot is really about geography as a secret. This is 1498, and the value of Gama's voyage is the map it would carry back. To seize the boats is to seize the information; the barbed word is "defende," which here means not "defends" but "forbids," a false-friend that trips English readers exactly where the sense turns.
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