著手著手 Got Him Got Him
這八戒縱身趕上，將鈀便築。那怪物一頭鑽進窟裡，還有七八尺長尾巴丟在外邊。八戒放下鈀，一把撾住道：「著手，著手。」盡力氣往外亂扯，莫想扯得動一毫。这八戒纵身赶上，将钯便筑。那怪物一头钻进窟里，还有七八尺长尾巴丢在外边。八戒放下钯，一把挝住道：「着手，着手。」尽力气往外乱扯，莫想扯得动一毫。
逐句解 Line by line
Eight Rules sprang after it and struck with his rake.
將 is the object-hauling jiāng. 鈀 is fixed at pá across the corpus — Eight Rules's nine-toothed rake, the weapon he is famous for.
The creature drove head-first into a burrow, leaving seven or eight chǐ of tail flung out behind.
A chǐ is the Chinese foot, a little longer than the English one. 長 is cháng again, and 還 is hái, "still."
Eight Rules put down his rake, seized it in one grip and cried, "Got him! Got him!"
著 is zháo both times, the reading that marks contact actually made — "got it!" 撾 is zhuā, to grasp: the reading the 1716 dictionary supplies by using this very character as its own pronunciation key.
He hauled outward with the whole of his strength and could not shift it by a hair.
得 is the light de of a "manage to" construction — could not manage to shift it. 盡 is fixed at jìn.
The whole passage is Eight Rules doing the obvious thing with enormous energy and no result. He strikes, the creature goes to ground, he drops his rake to grab the tail with both hands, and nothing moves.
Putting down the rake is the detail that matters. It is his weapon and the thing he is good with, and he abandons it in order to pull. The cry that follows — 著手，著手 — is triumph at having hold of something, which is not at all the same as having caught it.