Down the Coast, Homeward
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Parte-se costa abaixo, porque entende Que em vão com o Rei gentio trabalhava Em querer dele paz, a qual pretende Por firmar o comércio que tratava. Mas como aquela terra, que se estende Pela Aurora, sabida já deixava, Com estas novas torna à pátria cara, Certos sinais levando do que achara.
He sets off down the coast, for he sees that he was laboring in vain with the heathen King in seeking peace from him — the peace he wanted in order to secure the trade he was negotiating. But now that he had left behind, explored, that land which stretches along the Dawn, he turns back to his dear homeland with this news, carrying sure tokens of what he had found.
At Calicut, Gama has failed to win a real treaty from the Zamorin. He gives up, sails down the coast, and turns his prow back toward Portugal, carrying proof that he reached the East.
This is the quiet hinge of the voyage. Gama gives up on Calicut: the Zamorin will not sign, so the treaty and the commerce Portugal crossed an ocean for both slip away, and Camões records the failure without drama — the Captain simply turns down the coast and points home. The whole enterprise here shrinks to a single, sober fact: he has proof he reached the East.
What a first reader can miss is how much weight rides on "sinais" — the sure signs he carries back. The mission did not win the trade, but it settled the geography: the sea road to India is now known, "sabida." That is the real cargo. For Camões writing decades later, this half-success is exactly the seed of empire, and "Aurora" quietly names the prize — the whole East, the land of dawn, now charted on a Portuguese map.
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