鰲魚脫釣 The Escape, with a Quatrain
那八戒與沙僧聞得此言，就如鬼門關上放回來的一般，即忙牽馬挑擔，鼠攛而行。轉過那波月洞後門之外，叫聲：「師父。」那長老認得聲音，就在那荊棘中答應。沙僧就剖開草徑，攙著師父，慌忙的上馬。這裡：那八戒与沙僧闻得此言，就如鬼门关上放回来的一般，即忙牵马挑担，鼠撺而行。转过那波月洞后门之外，叫声：「师父。」那长老认得声音，就在那荆棘中答应。沙僧就剖开草径，搀着师父，慌忙的上马。这里：
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing these words, Eight Rules and Sha Monk felt as though loosed and sent back from the very Gate of Ghosts. In all haste they led the horse and shouldered the baggage and scurried off like rats. Rounding the back gate of the Wave-Moon Cave, they called out, 'Master!' — and the elder, knowing their voices, answered from within the brambles. Sha Monk then broke open a path through the grass, steadied the master, and got him hastily upon the horse. Whereof it is said:
The relief is physical and slightly undignified. 鬼門關, the Gate of Ghosts, is the pass into the underworld, and Chinese still uses it for a narrow escape — to have been to the Gate of Ghosts and back. 鼠攛 is to scurry like rats, which is not how heroes are usually described leaving a fight. 挑擔 takes 擔 as the noun dàn, the shoulder-load; 答應 reads 應 as yìng, to answer, and that answering voice out of the brambles is the reunion. The several 那 are all the pointing nà, and 聞得 and 認得 both take 得 as the structural de. 波月洞 is the Wave-Moon Cave. The prose then hands off on 這裡, "and at this point," which is the storyteller clearing his throat before the verse.
By savage malice he came near the blue-faced ghoul; / by earnest kindness he was blessed with Hundred-Flowers-Shy.
A balanced couplet, with peril on one side and rescue on the other. 狠毒, savage cruelty, is the ogre; 慇懃 — the same word as the commoner 殷勤, warm attentive kindness — is the princess. He is named for his face, 青面鬼, the blue-faced demon; she by her own name, 百花羞. And the two verbs are hung against each other exactly: 險遭, "very nearly met," against 幸有, "luckily had."
Like a great sea-turtle slipping the golden hook and line, / it wags its tail and shakes its head and rides the waves away.
The second couplet is the one that got away — told, for once, from the fish's point of view. The 鰲 is the giant sea-turtle of myth, the creature said to carry islands on its back, and here it slips the 金鉤, the golden hook, and goes. 擺尾搖頭, wagging its tail and shaking its head, is pure exhilaration; 逐浪遊 is to chase the waves and roam. For a monk who spent the last scene tied to a post, it is a generous image.
The escape is written with the storyteller's appetite for the physical: the disciples feel as though they have been let back through the Gate of Ghosts, they scurry off like rats, and the reunion — the shout, the answering voice out of the thicket, the hurried scramble onto the horse — is a quick piece of choreography, all relief and no dignity. Then, on the cue word 這裡, the passage hands over to a capping quatrain, which is how this novel habitually seals an episode.
The two couplets compress the chapter's turn into a pair of emblems. The first is a balance: 狠毒 against 慇懃, the 青面鬼 against 百花羞 — cruelty and kindness, the ogre and the princess, held in exact parallel so the reversal reads at a glance. The second is a picture: Tripitaka as the mythic 鰲, the great sea-turtle slipping the golden hook and wagging away over the water. The angled fish that gets free is a stock figure for a narrow escape, and it turns the chapter decisively out of the closed cave and onto the open road.