The crucial hour had come for this stanch vessel and her audacious captain. They wrestled with the storm bravely and obstinately, but were beaten back steadily, with no port in view. The Count determined to weather the gale till it should spend its fury. He coolly sent an aërogram to Munich, saying that all was well and that he might reach the city late in the day. Observing a suitable place to land, near the village of Loiching, he pointed the prow of his ship downward, approached the earth and cast anchor. As the front car touched the ground it was grasped by the willing hands of thronging peasants and villagers. Presently the ship was taken in charge by a military relief party which the Count had hailed on the way, at Guendelkoven, and which had hastened to his aid in automobiles. Fifty soldiers, in regular shifts, that night held the bow of the vessel by a short leash. The anchor was firmly fastened, and additional ropes secured the bow to an unwheeled wagon loaded with stones. Thus all night long that mighty hull swayed to and fro in the passing storm, securely as a ship anchored at sea. PLATE XI. [Illustration: ZEPPELIN DIRIGIBLE RESTING ON THE WATER. _Photo E. Levick, N. Y._] [Illustration: ZEPPELIN DIRIGIBLE OVER ZÜRICH. _Photo E. Levick, N. Y._] Next morning the vessel was well replenished and headed for home, by way of Munich. The return was easy, for the wind had nearly reversed its course. Sailing at 32 miles an hour, with a quartering current, the stormbeaten ship soon reached Munich, where she was hailed with boundless enthusiasm. The Prince Regent entertained the Count during his sojourn of three hours, and decorated him with a gold medal. The ship then sailed for Friedrichshafen, with the full speed of the wind and of her propellers, at one time attaining 68 miles an hour. At nightfall she landed gently on the lake near Manzell, having weathered that tempestuous voyage without serious mishap. This was a splendid proof of her stanchness; but a few days later she was put through other tests quite as severe, one being a night voyage of thirteen and a third hours, after a day of busy maneuvering. Following this came her still longer voyage, to Metz, where she was stationed as a frontier war vessel, and one of a considerable fleet contemplated by the German government. In the meantime the energetic Count had started his fifth vessel, or military _Zeppelin II_, which now was nearing completion at the works of the Zeppelin Air Ship Construction Company. Her hull measured 446 feet in length, had a diameter of 42½ feet, and a volume of over half a million cubic feet. It also had a ladder running through one of the compartments to a platform on its top. Her motors of 220 horse power were taken uninjured from the wreck of the old _Zeppelin IV_ at Echterdingen.