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，搀著师父，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:
鬼門關 ("the Gate of Ghosts," the pass into the underworld) figures their reprieve as a return from death. 挑擔 takes 擔 as the noun dàn ("the load"); 鼠攛 = "to scurry like rats." 答應 (應 = yìng, "to answer") signals the reunion; the several 那 are all deictic (nà), and 聞得 / 認得 take 得 as the structural de. 波月洞 = the Wave-Moon Cave. The prose closes on 這裡 ("whereof, at this point"), the tale-teller's lead-in to the capping verse.
By savage malice he came near the blue-faced ghoul; / by earnest kindness he was blessed with Hundred-Flowers-Shy.
A regulated couplet balancing peril against rescue: 狠毒 (savage cruelty, the ogre) set opposite 慇懃 (= 殷勤, earnest goodwill, the princess); 青面鬼 ("blue-faced demon") names the ogre by his fearsome aspect, 百花羞 the princess by her name. The antithesis 險遭 / 幸有 ("nearly met" / "luckily had") frames the episode's whole reversal.
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 closing couplet renders the escape in a single image: the 鰲 (the giant sea-turtle or leviathan of myth) freed from the angler's 金鉤 ("golden hook"), swimming off at ease. 擺尾搖頭 ("wagging tail, shaking head") conveys the exhilaration of release; 逐浪遊 = "to chase the waves and roam." The figure caps the escape-quatrain with an emblem of hard-won freedom.
The escape is rendered with the tale-teller's relish for the physical: the disciples feel as though "sent back from the Gate of Ghosts," scurry off "like rats," and the whole reunion — the call, the answer from the brambles, the hurried mounting — is a rapid choreography of relief. The passage then hands off, on the storyteller's lead-in 這裡, to a capping quatrain, in the novel's habitual manner of sealing an episode with verse.
The two closing couplets compress the chapter's turn into a pair of emblems. The first is antithetical, ranging 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 that the reversal from peril to safety is legible at a glance. The second is figurative: Tripitaka is the mythic 鰲, the great sea-turtle slipping the golden hook, wagging free upon the waves. The image of the angled fish that gets away is a stock figure for a narrow escape, and it turns the chapter decisively from the closed cave toward the open road to Baoxiang.