遇難神僧想悟能 The Holy Monk in His Calamity
旁邊擁上七八個綁縛手，將唐僧拿去，好便似鷹拿燕雀，索綁繩纏。這的是苦命江流思行者，遇難神僧想悟能。道聲：「徒弟啊！不知你在那山擒怪，何處降妖，我卻被魔頭拿來，遭此毒害，幾時再得相見？好苦啊！你們若早些兒來，還救得我命；若十分遲了，斷然不能保矣。」一邊嗟嘆，一邊淚落如雨。旁边拥上七八个绑缚手，将唐僧拿去，好便似鹰拿燕雀，索绑绳缠。这的是苦命江流思行者，遇难神僧想悟能。道声：「徒弟啊！不知你在那山擒怪，何处降妖，我却被魔头拿来，遭此毒害，几时再得相见？好苦啊！你们若早些儿来，还救得我命；若十分迟了，断然不能保矣。」一边嗟叹，一边泪落如雨。
逐句解 Line by line
From the side seven or eight of the binding-men crowded up and carried the Tang Monk off, for all the world as a hawk carries a swallow, and trussed him with rope and wound him about with cord.
綁縛手, "binding-hands," is a job description: this cave keeps men whose office is tying people up. 好便似鷹拿燕雀 takes 似 as sì; 將唐僧拿去 takes the handling marker 將 as jiāng.
This is indeed: bitter-fated River Float thinking upon the Pilgrim; the holy monk in his calamity longing for Wuneng.
The third of the chapter's untagged parallel couplets to stand inside prose, and it is treated as the others are: left as prose, unflagged, the passage keeping three chips. 遇難 takes 難 as nàn, calamity — set that against the nán, "hard to do," of 功行難 three passages back. 江流, River Float, is the monk's infant name.
He cried out, "Disciples! I know not on what mountain you are catching monsters, in what place subduing fiends,
在那山擒怪 — the question-word nǎ, running parallel with 何處. 降妖 takes 降 as xiáng, "to subdue," not jiàng, "to descend." The Tang Monk, tied to a post, imagines his disciples doing precisely what they are in fact doing: beating an empty skin.
while I am taken by the demon chief and come to this cruel pass. When shall we look upon one another again?
魔頭, the demon chief. 再得相見 takes 得 as dé and 相 as xiāng, the "each other" reading.
Bitter indeed! If you come betimes, you may yet save my life; if you are very late, I am past all saving."
還救得我命, the "can be done" reading, dé. The calculation is a monk's: not "come and rescue me" but "come early enough and it will still be possible." 斷然不能保矣 closes on a literary flourish, which is how this master talks when he is most frightened.
So he sighed and lamented; and all the while his tears fell like rain.
一邊嗟嘆，一邊淚落如雨. The chapter has arrived at exactly the place its opening poem said it need never go: a man calling on somebody else to save him.
A hundred and thirteen characters, and the chapter's cruellest joke is structural. Bound to the post, Sanzang calls on his disciples and pictures them 在那山擒怪，何處降妖 — somewhere on some mountain, catching monsters, subduing fiends. They are in fact a few hundred paces away, beating a tiger-skin spread over a rock.
Read the passage against the poem that opened the chapter. 既然皆己心，何用別人說: if it is all your own mind, what need have you of another man's telling? Four thousand characters later the man to whom that poem was attributed is weeping at a post and calculating how soon somebody else has to arrive if he is to live. The novel does not point this out. It simply prints the couplet — 苦命江流思行者，遇難神僧想悟能 — and lets the two verbs, 思 and 想, do the work.