On a remote Scottish island, early in the nineteenth century, an embattled British regiment fights against a legion of werewolves - and the monsters are winning.  The soldiers fall back on a cliff-top castle which has become a convent, the only place on the island that can be fortified and defended.  But the arrival of a merchant captain, Absalom Coffin, and his crew of freebooters, changes thebalance of power.  Coffin determines to find the werewolves' lair - and triggers a chain of events which will spell doom and tragedy for some, redemption for others.