On October 30, about the time of vespers, Cabeca de Vaca, who happened to be in the lead, discovered the mouth of what seemed to be an immense river.  There they anchored among islands.  They found that the volume of water brought down by this river was so great that it freshened the sea-water even three miles out.  They went up the river a little way to try to get fuel to parch their corn, half a handful of raw corn being the entire ration for a day.  The current and a strong north wind, however, drove them back.  When they sounded, a mile and a half from shore, a line of thirty fathoms found no bottom.  After this Narvaez with three of the boats kept on along the shore, but the boat commanded by Castillo and Dorantes, and that of Cabeca de Vaca, stood out to sea before a fair east wind, rowing and sailing, for four days.  They never again saw or heard of the remainder of the fleet.

On November 5 the wind became a gale.  All night the boats drifted, the men exhausted with toil, hunger and cold.  Cabeca de Vaca and the shipmaster were the only men capable of handling an oar in their boat.  Near morning they heard the tumbling of waves on a beach, and soon after, a tremendous wave struck the boat with a force that hurled her up on the beach and roused the men who seemed dead, so that they crept on hands and knees toward shelter in a ravine.  Here some rain-water was found, a fire was made and they parched their corn, and here they were found by some Indians who brought them food.  They still had some of their trading stores, from which they produced colored beads and hawk-bells.  After resting and collecting provisions the indomitable Spaniards dug their boat out of the sand and made ready to go on with the voyage.

They were but a little way from shore when a great wave struck the battered craft, and the cold having loosened their grip on the oars the boat was capsized and some of the crew drowned.  The rest were driven ashore a second time and lost literally everything they had.  Fortunately some live brands were left from their fire, and while they huddled about the blaze the Indians appeared and offered them hospitality.  To some of the party this seemed suspicious.  Were the Indians cannibals?  Even when they were warmed and fed in a comfortable shelter nobody dared to sleep.

But the Indians had no treacherous intentions whatever, and continued to share with the shipwrecked unfortunates their own scanty provision.  Fever, hunger and despair, reduced the eighty men who had come ashore, to less than twenty.  All but Cabeca and two others who were helpless from fever at last departed on the desperate adventure of trying to find their way overland to Mexico.  One of the two left behind died and the other ran away in delirium, leaving Cabeca de Vaca alone, as the slave of the Indians.