Just then Harry gave a _coo-ey_. He couldn't give a very loud one, for he was lying on a sack on the robber's horse; but it made Warrigal very savage.
He put the cold muzzle of a pistol against Harry's face and said, "You screech again, youngster, and you won't do it no more."
And then Warrigal took Harry and the horses into the scrub, and gagged Harry with a bit of iron he took out of his pocket, and tied him up to a crooked old honeysuckle-tree with a long piece of rope he carried in his saddle-bags.
"Don't frighten yourself, I'll tell yer mar where you are, and you'll be back by breakfast," said Warrigal, as he got on Guardsman and rode off, driving his own tired horse before him.
Next morning, just as the day was breaking, Warrigal and his two mates, with crape masks on, rode up to Wonga-Wonga.
They made as little noise as they could; but the dogs began to bark and woke Sydney.
When he woke, however, Warrigal had got his little window open, and was covering him with a pistol.
Sydney put out his hand for his revolver, and though Warrigal shouted, "Throw up your hands, boy, or I'll shoot you through the head," he jumped out of bed and fired.
He missed Warrigal, and Warrigal missed him; but Warrigal's bullet knocked Sydney's revolver out of his hand, and one of Warrigal's mates made a butt against the bedroom door and smashed it; and he and Warrigal rushed into the room, and threw Sydney down on the bed, and pinioned his arms with a sheet.
The other bushranger was watching the horses.
By this time the whole station was aroused. The men peeped out of their huts, half frightened, half amused; not one of them came near the house. John Jones and his wife piled their boxes against their room door, and then crept under the bed.
Miss Smith went into hysterics; and Gertrude and her sisters couldn't help looking as white as their night-dresses.
Mrs. Lawson had fired off her blunderbuss, but it had only broken two panes of the parlor window, and riddled the veranda posts; so Wonga-Wonga was at the bushrangers' mercy.
They ransacked the house, and took possession of any little plate, and jewelry, and other portable property they could find. When the robbers had packed up what they called the "swag," and put it on one of their horses, they pulled Ki Li out of bed, and made him light a fire, and cook some chops and boil some tea.