The last days of GRACE O'MALLEY'S life are a mystery. There are records of her ships--if not personally captained by her--still patrolling the western Irish coast in mid 1601. She seems to have lived at Rockfleet Castle near the end, and probably died at the age of seventy-three, in 1603--the same year as Elizabeth's death. Some of her stark, brooding castles and ruined abbeys on the shores and islands of Clew Bay today stand testament to her life, though the whereabouts of her earthly remains are still in dispute. While her ending is shrouded in the mists of time, there's nothing to suggest that Grace O'Malley would have gone gently into that good night. One can imagine that, like Elizabeth, she'd have stood her ground till the Reaper paid his final, insistent call. But thanks to Ireland's balladeers and bards and a handful of Englishmen awed by so remarkable a woman, her last voyage was not into oblivion, but the pages of history and the rich fabric of Irish legend.