How Antam Gonçalvez, and afterwards Nuno Tristam, came before the Infant
with their booty.
I cannot behold the arrival of these ships, with the novelty of the gain
of those slaves before the face of our Prince, without finding some
delight in the same. For meseemeth that I behold before my eyes that
pleasure of his, of what kind it would be. For just in so far as things
are more desired, and more numerous and heavy labours are undergone for
them, so much the greater delight do they bring with them when a man
obtaineth them. O holy prince, peradventure thy pleasure and delight
might have some semblance of covetousness, at receiving the knowledge of
such a sum of riches, even as great as those thou didst expend to arrive
at that result? And now, seeing the beginnings of some recompense, may
we not think thou didst feel joy, not so much for the number of the
captives taken, as for the hope thou didst conceive of the others thou
couldst take?
But of a surety it was not in thy noble heart to set store by such small
wealth! And justly I may call it small, in comparison of thy greatness;
without which thou wast not able, and knewest not how, to begin or
finish any part of thy deeds. But thy joy was solely from that one holy
purpose of thine to seek salvation for the lost souls of the heathen, as
I have already said in the VIIth Chapter of this work. And in the light
of this it seemed to thee, when thou sawest those captives brought into
thy presence, that the expense and trouble thou hadst undergone was
nothing: such was thy pleasure in beholding them. And yet the greater
benefit was theirs, for though their bodies were now brought into some
subjection, that was a small matter in comparison of their souls, which
would now possess true freedom for evermore. Antam Gonçalvez was the
first to come with his part of the booty, and then arrived Nuno Tristam,
whose present reception and future reward answered to the toil he had
undergone; just as a fruitful soil with but little sowing answereth the
husbandman, when for however small a part it receiveth, it giveth back a
great increase of fruit.