The Rumor Reaches the Captain
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Porém não tardou muito que, voando, Um rumor não soasse com verdade: Que foram presos os feitores, quando Foram sentidos vir-se da cidade. Esta fama as orelhas penetrando Do sábio Capitão, com brevidade Faz represaria nuns, que às naus vieram A vender a pedraria que trouxeram.
But it was not long before a rumor flew, and it rang true: that the factors had been seized, once they were noticed slipping away from the city. This report, penetrating the ears of the wise Captain, makes him swiftly take reprisal on certain men who had come to the ships to sell the gems they had brought.
On the Malabar coast, Gama's factors ashore have been seized. Word flies back to the ships, and the Captain answers in kind by holding some local merchants who had come aboard to trade.
The stanza is pure mechanism: a rumor takes wing, lands as fact, and the Captain answers before the line even breaks for breath. Camões lets the two crews mirror each other. Gama's men were seized ashore; Gama seizes traders aboard. The whole exchange runs on a symmetry of hostages, and the poet reports it without a flicker of outrage on either side.
What a first reader misses is how the grammar does the work. Notice how many verbs arrive in the passive with the agent left out, foram presos, foram sentidos, so the treachery has no named hand behind it, only a rumor that soasse com verdade. The one active verb belongs to the Captain, Faz, and it lands on him alone. He is the sole figure in the stanza who decides rather than has things happen to him.
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