Answer: It highlights the rhythm of the approaching soldiers
Step-by-step explanation:
Punctuation is when sighs and symbols are used in order to help readers understand a text or story. It shows how a particular sentence is being constructed and it makes the meaning of words to be understood better.
Examples of punctuation are period, dash, colon, brackets, comma, ellipsis, question mark, exclamation point, semicolon, etc.
The statement that best explains the effect of the punctuation in this passage is that it highlights the rhythm of the approaching soldiers.