Welcome to Cabeza de Baca.

Episode 6, The Island of Ill Fate.

I'm Brandon Seale.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca couldn't tell if it was just a dream, but, quote,

it seemed as though I was hearing the sound of breakers on the beach, end quote.

He awoke to the hard logs pressing against his back, a reminder that he was in fact a drift in the

middle of the Gulf of Mexico on a homemade raft. When he opened his eyes, all he could see in that grim pre-dawn hour

were the 49 men of his crew piled on top of one another like corpses.

Over the previous two months, their sad craft had brought them more than 500 miles

through storms, privation, and attacks from hostile natives, only to meet their match with

the mighty Mississippi. The current from the Great Father of Waters was so powerful that it scattered

the five rafts of the Narvaise expedition all across the featureless Gulf of Mexico. Cabes de Vaca's

raft had managed to rejoin his commanders, that of Panfilo de Narvaise,

and pulled within speaking distance of him, only for Narvaise to tell Cavesa de Vaca that it was every man for himself at this point.

Cabesa de Vaca ordered his men to put down their oars.

Over the next five days, Hope disappeared from that

fragile raft, and the men's bodies began to shut down one by one. When Cabeza de Vaca

had closed his eyes the night before, he didn't expect to ever open them again. So to suddenly

hear the sound of waves crashing on a beach seemed almost too good to be true.

At first, Cabez de Vaca refused to let himself believe that he was hearing it.

Yet soon, others as well began to point their ears in the same direction, roused from their sleep by the same distant sound.

Cabezza de Vaca asked the helmsman if he was hearing what he thought he was hearing.

...