He was still grumbling and bawling, his anger hard to quiet, when a voice was heard speaking up in the air, calling: "Great Sage Sun, do not fret; sworn brother of the Tang, cease your weeping.

The quarrel is still running when help arrives, unasked, out of the air. 哏哏 hěn hěn is angry growling. The character 哏 is a borrowing: the word is the one written 狠, fierce or savage, and the Yuan and Ming vernacular regularly spelled it this way — the Qing handbook of colloquial usage 《通俗編》 collects the character from the Yuan statutes and glosses it as an intensifier. The modern reading gén, "comic", belongs to a much later stage of the language and has nothing to do with this line. 吆喝 is to bawl. Both names in the greeting are titles. 孫大聖, "Great Sage Sun", is what survives of 齊天大聖, "Great Sage Equal to Heaven" — the rank Wukong awarded himself, and which Heaven then made the mistake of confirming. 唐御弟 Táng yùdì is Sanzang: Emperor Taizong made him his sworn younger brother before he set out, so the monk travels as imperial kin. 聽得 takes the unstressed de, hearing tied to what came of it.

We are a company of spirits dispatched by the Bodhisattva Guanyin, come expressly to give the scripture-seeker our hidden protection."

差 is read chāi, to send someone off on an assignment — the word behind the modern expression for going on a business trip. There is a character to watch in 神祗: the edition prints 祗, whose own meaning is "reverent", but this is a very common way of writing 祇 (qí), a god of the earth. The word is 神祇 shén qí, "spirits and deities", and it is read so here. Then 暗中保, "guard from out of sight" — the phrase that gives the chapter half its title, 諸神暗佑. Keep it in view. The chapter makes good on it twice, and neither time where you would expect.

Hearing this, the elder hastily made his obeisance.

禮拜 is to bow in reverence. One voice from the sky, two entirely different reflexes: the master drops into worship, and — as the next line shows — the disciple starts taking names.

Said the Pilgrim: "Which of you are you? Announce your names, that I may call the roll."

那幾個 asks "which ones?", so 那 is nǎ again. 點卯 diǎn mǎo is the joke of the passage. The 卯 hour runs from five to seven in the morning, when clerks in a government office reported for duty and a supervisor went down the register; 點卯 is that roll-call, and Chinese still uses it today for clocking in and doing no more than the minimum. Heaven announces itself, and Wukong asks the gods to line up and sound off.

The gods said: "We are the Six Ding and Six Jia, the Guardians of the Five Quarters, the Four Sentinels of the Watches, and the eighteen Protectors of the Faith,

The roster is a small anthology of Chinese religion. The 六丁六甲 are twelve spirit-generals named out of the sixty-term cycle used for dating days and years — Daoist, and very old. The 五方揭諦 hold the five directions. The 四值功曹 are sentinels on duty for the year, the month, the day and the hour. The 護教伽藍 are the eighteen protectors of monasteries, from Sanskrit saṃghārāma, a monastic compound, with 伽 taking its transliteration value qié. Between them they cover Daoist, esoteric and Buddhist ground. This is not a war-band; it is an interdepartmental detail, seconded from four agencies at once.

each taking his turn on the day's watch to attend your call."

輪流 is to take turns, 值日 to be on the day's duty, 聽候 to await orders. The gods describe themselves as a rota — going along with the roll-call, and possibly enjoying it.

Said the Pilgrim: "Who is on duty first today?"

先從誰起, "starting with whom?" He has swallowed the premise whole and moved on to scheduling.

The Guardians said: "The Ding and Jia, the Sentinels, and the Protectors serve by rotation.

輪次 is "by rotation". 伽 is again qié. The reply keeps up the clerical tidiness of the whole exchange.

But of us Guardians of the Five Quarters, it is the Gold-Headed Guardian alone who stays at your side day and night."

金頭揭諦 Jīntóu Jiēdì, the Gold-Headed Guardian, is the one to watch: he is the figure who will actually resolve this chapter, and he does it without striking anybody. 晝夜不離左右, "never leaving your side day or night", marks him out as the permanent fixture among the rotating staff.

Said the Pilgrim: "If that is so, let those not on duty withdraw for now,

不當值 bù dāng zhí is "not on today's duty", 當 read dāng, to serve one's turn; 且退 is "stand down for now". He dismisses the off-duty ranks with the briskness of a man who has run a department before, which in a sense he has.

and let the Six Ding spirit-generals, the Sentinel of the day, and the Guardians stay to keep watch over my master.

In 六丁神將 the 將 is a general, jiàng — not the jiāng that elsewhere in this chapter shunts an object in front of its verb. 保守著 is "keep guard over", its 著 the unstressed zhe of a job left running. Posting a watch on Sanzang before leaving is the one wholly prudent act Wukong performs in the entire episode.

Let old Sun go find that vile dragon down in the gorge and make it give me back my horse."

教他還 is "make him give it back": 教 causative, jiào, and 還 huán, return. 還我馬來 is now fixed as the war cry — and it will be quoted back at him, word for word, by somebody who has counted what is missing from it. 那澗 is the pointing nà.

The gods obeyed his command.

遵令 is to comply with an order. Four characters, with a whole comic inversion folded inside them: Heaven's officers taking instructions from the prisoner Heaven jailed.

Only then did Sanzang set his heart at rest; he sat down on the stone cliff and charged the Pilgrim to be careful.

放下心 is to set the heart down — stop worrying; 吩咐 is to instruct. With a bodyguard posted, the master can finally let his disciple go, which was the sticking point all along. It took a squad of gods to settle an argument about babysitting.

Said the Pilgrim: "Only be easy in your mind."

只管 is "just go ahead and —"; 寬心, to ease the mind. He hands the master's own anxiety back to him, smoothed flat.

Good Monkey King! He cinched tight his cotton cassock, hitched up his tiger-skin kilt, and gripped fast his gold-banded iron cudgel;

好猴王, "Good Monkey King!", is the storyteller shouting from the platform. It always means a feat is coming, and it is the cue for an audience to sit forward. Then three quick items of kit. The 直裰 zhí duō is a monk's long straight-cut robe; the 虎皮裙 is the tiger-skin kilt he has worn since he killed the tiger that was wearing it; the 金箍鐵棒 is the gold-hooped iron staff, in full 如意金箍棒, "the as-you-wish gold-hooped cudgel". 揝 zǎn is to grip tight, its 著 the unstressed zhe of a hold kept up.

he braced up his spirits and went straight to the gorge, half riding cloud and half riding mist,

抖擻精神 is to shake the spirits awake — 抖擻 is still the ordinary word for pulling yourself together. 徑臨 is to go straight to. 澗壑 jiàn hè is the ravine and its chasm; 半雲半霧, "half cloud, half mist", describes a low hovering drift rather than proper flight.

and, hovering over the surface of the water, cried aloud: "You rascally loach, give me back my horse!

Here is the insult the whole fight turns on. 潑 pō as abuse means vile, good-for-nothing. 泥鰍 ní qiū is a loach: a small, slimy, bottom-feeding mud-fish, about as far below a dragon as anything in the water can get. Calling a dragon a loach is designed to work, and it does. 還我馬來 takes 還 as huán; 那水面 is the pointing nà.

Give me back my horse!"

Repeated, because a taunt is not an argument and repetition is what it has instead — 還 again huán, give it back. Notice what the shout does not contain: any hint of who is shouting, or why. The dragon will have a great deal to say about that omission before the chapter is out.