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Hiland Silkirk, with tears of gratitude in his eyes, got aboard, and the triumphant Jehu turned his horse and started homeward. "Well done, good and faithful servant, forasmuch as you have done good unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me." Captain Nicholas McDuffy.
The relations between the races in the South have always been such that it requires a Negro of Spartan courage to face a white man and return blow for blow, it matters not how righteous may be his cause. Captain Nicholas McDuffy was a man without fear. Two or three years ago, while a member of the police force of Wilmington, it became his duty to arrest some white roughs for disorderly conduct.
McDuffy came to Wilmington a rough country lad, secured employment, went to work, saved his money, bought property and became a citizen of note and respectability. He joined the engine company and rose like a meteor to its foremost rank.
It was a hazardous undertaking, but McDuffy waded in and landed his men, but it cost him dear. His body was so hacked by knife thrusts that he was compelled to go to the hospital for repairs. Generally policemen are commended and rewarded for such heroic deeds, but this placed the name of Nicholas McDuffy upon the death list. A Negro officer must not presume to arrest a white man.
On my reputation as a military man, sir, I came to respect these principles from first hearing them advanced by General Cheves McDuffy Quattlebum, while in the Mexican War, which I had the honor to fight in. Yes, sir; I had the honor of fighting in that war, and have seen many a man killed!"
I write the above that the reader may know what manner of man this was who was compelled to leave his home, his wife and little ones and flee for his life. Captain Nicholas McDuffy was at one time foreman of the Cape Fear Engine Company.
There were, however, white men who admired McDuffy for his frankness and courage, and when the riotous excitement was at its height and the assassins were seeking here and there for victims, one of these true men warned McDuffy just in time to get into the swamp before a mob surrounded his house.
The other straightened a little, and his eyes travelled slowly up and down the form of Strann. "I been hungering to meet a man like you," he said. "Hungerin', partner." "North of town they's the old McDuffy place, all in ruins and nobody ever near it. I'll be there in an hour, m'frien'."
To speak to each other through the uproar, they had to cup their hands about their lips and shout. Then again the rainfall around them fell away to a drizzling mist and the beating of the downpour sounded far away, and they were surrounded by distant walls of noise. So they came to the McDuffy place. It was a helpless ruin, long abandoned. Not an iota of the roof remained.
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