端詳已久 Pilgrim Has Watched Too Long
八戒歡喜，上前舒手，就欲取餅。不知行者端詳已久，喝一聲：「且住，這廝不是好人。休得無禮，你是甚麼土地，來誑老孫？看棍。」八戒欢喜，上前舒手，就欲取饼。不知行者端详已久，喝一声：「且住，这厮不是好人。休得无礼，你是甚么土地，来诳老孙？看棍。」
逐句解 Line by line
Eight Rules was delighted. He came forward and put out his hand, meaning to take a cake.
Three four-character phrases in twelve characters, delight then reaching then taking. The segment is over before anyone can stop him, which is what the even measure is built for.
He did not know that Pilgrim had been examining the pair for some while. Pilgrim gave a shout: "Hold! This fellow is no honest man.
喝 is hè, to shout or bark an order, not the hē of drinking; the automatic reading gives the drinking value here. 端詳 is looking something over deliberately, and the sentence puts it in the past perfect: the inspection was finished before the shout.
"None of your insolence! What sort of local god are you, to come deceiving old Monkey? Mind the rod!"
A two-character tail closing the quotation is joined backwards here: 看棍。」 carries no attribution of its own and is not a narrator clause, so it belongs with the speech it ends. 甚 is shén in the questioning 甚麼, against the shèn of the intensifier that turned up in 甚喜 seven passages back; the sealed chapters carry both.
What gives the imposture away is never stated. Pilgrim has been examining the pair for some while — the narrator says so in the same breath as it says Eight Rules did not know — and then he shouts, and the shout contains an accusation but no evidence. This is characteristic. Pilgrim's discernment is a faculty rather than a process, and the novel does not show him reasoning towards it here.
The shape of the moment recurs through the whole book: Eight Rules reaches for food, Pilgrim sees through the disguise, and the monster acts before either of them can finish. Here the acting is done in the following passage, and what it takes is not Eight Rules and not Pilgrim.
There is a small irony in the accusation. Pilgrim demands to know what sort of local god this is, coming to deceive old Monkey — and the answer, which the chapter supplies at its very end, is that he is not any sort of god but a pine tree. The insult lands closer to the truth than the insulter knows.