The Great Sage climbed to the summit to look, and there on the southern side came the boom-boom of drums and the clang-clang of gongs; more than a thousand men and horses flashed into view, all with hawks and hounds on the leash and blades and spears in hand. The Monkey King looked closely: these were men of fearsome approach, stalwart fellows, valiant indeed. Behold:

Drums, gongs, a thousand men and horses coming up the southern slope. The narrator calls them stalwart and valiant and means it — for the moment. 那 points three times, 那大聖, 只見那, 那些人, and is nà each time. 都 is dōu; 架著 and 持著 both end in the unstressed zhe; 仔細 takes zǐ; 來得 takes the unstressed de.

Fox-fur cloaks their shoulders and crowns; brocade and damask swathe waist and breast.

The hunters' portrait opens in matched five-character lines. Fur above, brocade below: money on display.

In their quivers, wolf-fang arrows; at their hips, bows of jeweled carving.

狼牙箭 are wolf-fang arrows, barbed so they cannot be pulled back out. The name is doing the work that the picture does not have to.

The men are like mountain-searching tigers; the horses, like dragons vaulting a ravine.

似 is sì, like — and it is answered by 如 in the second half, the same word twice over so the two images balance. Men as tigers, horses as dragons: the hunters are being given the beasts' own attributes.

In packs they lead their hounds along; on every arm they perch their hawks.

引著 ends in the unstressed zhe, marking something kept up rather than done once. 滿膀 is the whole forearm — the length of arm a hawk stands on.

In wicker baskets they haul the fire-guns; and fast on the wrist, the sea-east falcon.

海東青 is the gyrfalcon of the far northeast, the most prized hunting bird in the empire and a standing tribute item — the falcon an emperor gave as a gift. 火炮 here are hand-guns, hauled up the hill in wicker baskets. Falconry and firearms in the same couplet, the very old and the very new.

Lime-poles by the hundred-odd loads; hare-forks a thousand shafts and more.

擔 is dàn here, a carrying-pole load — what one man shoulders — not dān, to carry. 粘竿 are liming poles, smeared with birdlime so a bird that lands is stuck; 兔叉 are pronged hare-spears. This is not sport equipment but industrial trapping gear, counted in hundreds and thousands.

Ox-head nets to bar the trails; and Yama-snares, the buckling cords.

And here the admiring catalogue turns. The nets are called ox-head nets and the snares Yama-snares: 牛頭 is the ox-headed jailer of the Buddhist hells and 閻王 is King Yama who judges the dead. The hunters' own gear is named after the underworld, which is a quiet way of saying where all this is heading. 扣子 ends in an unstressed zi.

All at once the wild hallooing rises; scattered they spread like stars filling the sky.

散撒 takes sàn, to scatter. The beaters spread out across the slope like stars filling the sky — and being flung across a hillside is exactly what happens to them a few lines later. The simile is a spoiler.