便去脫剝 Silk From Their Waists
那長老雖然苦惱，卻還留心看著那些女子。那些女子把他吊得停當，便去脫剝衣服。長老心驚，暗自忖道：「這一脫了衣服，是要打我的情了。或者夾生兒吃我的情也有哩。」那长老虽然苦恼，却还留心看着那些女子。那些女子把他吊得停当，便去脱剥衣服。长老心惊，暗自忖道：「这一脱了衣服，是要打我的情了。或者夹生儿吃我的情也有哩。」
逐句解 Line by line
Wretched as the Elder was, he still kept an eye on those women.
著 is zhe again, the ongoing state — watching, keeping it up. 還 is hái, still, even so. Seventeen characters that quietly establish he is a witness as well as a victim.
Once they had him hanging properly, the women went off and began stripping their clothes.
得 takes dé after 吊 — hung until it was done properly. 剝 is bō: 康熙 刀部八畫 gives 北角切, 音駁, and among its glosses 褫也，脫也 — to strip off, to remove. 中原音韻 files the character with 駁 in 蕭豪. The everyday modern bāo has no old band at all.
The Elder took fright and said inwardly, "If they are taking their clothes off like this, they mean to give me a beating."
打我的情 — the sense is what they intend for him. He guesses wrong, and the guess tells you what he thinks is the worst thing that can happen in a room.
"Or else they mean to eat me raw, that could be it too."
夾生兒 — half-cooked, raw in the middle. 兒 takes the full ér. He has arrived at the right answer by the second guess, and the 哩 at the end is a shrug: that's possible as well.
He watches. Tied face down over a beam and expecting to be eaten, he is still paying attention to what the women are doing, and the chapter gives him credit for it.
His two guesses are a small character study. A beating first — the worst thing he can readily imagine — and then, almost as an afterthought, being eaten raw. The particle he ends on is a shrug. He has reasoned his way to cannibalism and the grammar stays mild.
The verb for stripping is one of a small group in this book whose ordinary modern reading has no footing in the old dictionaries at all. The rime books give it one band, matching a character meaning dappled; the pronunciation most Chinese speakers would use today for peeling fruit simply is not there.