As we stood there, packed together, with hardly a semblance of ranks kept
anywhere, craning to see over the heads of the men in front of us and to
try to see past and between the many big and tall tombs and mausoleums
which flanked the road on either side, a period of tense silence or
blurred murmurings was ended by a second great surge of cheers from front
to rear. We all cheered till we were hoarse. Again we peered and listened
and questioned each other, again came a roar of cheering like a sea
billow. Again and again alternated the half silence and the uproar. Before
we learned what was happening or had happened word came from mouth to
mouth that we were going on. The press in front of us gradually melted
away, we were able to sidle into the roadway, reform ranks and tramp on
Romewards.
After a very brief march we turned aside to our right into a meadow on the
west of the road and its flanking rows of tombs, between the Highway and
the Tiber, about half way from Mulvian Bridge to the Flaminian Gate of
Rome; that is, about half a mile from each. There we found a meticulously
laid-out and perfectly appointed camp, precisely suited to the forty-five
hundred of us and our requisitioned mules, wagons and what not.
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