Not P but Moby-Dick (71)

[Mike Jing]

>From Chapter 89:

First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast, when
it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all
controllable by the occupant or occupants,—a mast, an oar, a nine-inch
cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same.

Here, the "nine-inch" refers to the girth of the rope, is that correct?

Previous translations interpreted it as the length, which seems obviously
wrong to me.