We now return the captain of the mini-sub, whose name happened to be "Skipper."
Skipper, despondent over the loss of his sub, pulled out a dagger and recited a line from Romeo and Juliet, "Oh happy dagger." He then plunged the dagger into his chest.
However, the dagger happened to be a magic dagger so he was granted eternal life. But he was also cursed to wander the earth forever until he could find the perfect tea. Unbeknownst to our hero, the perfect tea is made only by the mermaids of the ocean.
Our hero began this fateful quest by mixing cheese, milk, and other stuff together to make a sculpture of the Sphinx, which then came alive and said, "If you can answer my riddle I will then answer one question for you. But if you can not answer my riddle I will eat you."
And the riddle was "What goes up must...."
"Finish it!" demanded the Sphinx. "I will give you five seconds to answer: 5... 4... 3... 2..."
"WAIT!" yelled Skipper. "Give me a hint, PLEASE!"
The Sphinx replied, "You want a HINT? A HINT? Okay, HERE'S your HINT!" and with that, the Sphinx tied a large lobster-bib around its neck and got out a large knife and fork. "How's THAT for a Hint ?"
Skipper yelled again, "Wait! Give me another hint! PLEASE!"
The Sphinx roared back, "You want ANOTHER hint? HERE'S your HINT!" grabbing Skipper and throwing him up in the air with all its might.
Skipper flew up into the clouds, and he almost seemed to hover for a moment in their fuzzy whiteness before coming down. Suddenly he realized the answer to the riddle as he plummeted towards the ground. Fortunately, his fall was broken by landing on an unsuspecting duck.
"QUAAAAAAAAACK!"
"What goes up must come down!" said Skipper.
The Sphinx had already worked up an appetite, so it said, "Best two out of three?" Skipper agreed, so the Sphinx took a moment to think of a really really hard riddle this time. Then it said, "What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Skipper replied, "An African or a European swallow?"
The Sphinx said, "What you get when you mate an African female with a European male swallow."
Skipper replied, "An Asian swallow that is capable of flying at Mach 13."
"WRONG!" yelled the Sphinx, "The correct answer is Mach 14!"
"Rats," said Skipper, "That was gonna be my next guess."
The Sphinx thought up the final deciding riddle. It was "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop?"
But nobody ever found out because at that point a swallow stuck on the front of a malfunctioning Space Shuttle crashed straight into the Sphinx at Mach 14 (so THAT'S how they do it!) and blew it to smithereens.
Skipper carefully maneuvered around the crushed Sphinx and Shuttle and continued on his way. Before long, he came to a lemonade stand run by Attila the Hun.
Attila was sculpting a replica of the Trojan Horse out of tofu and singing the fearsome battle-cry of the Huns, which went, "LA LAA LAAAL AAL LLAL AL OP URRGGGGH BURRRRP, 'SCUSE MELAAA LAAAA."
Skipper ordered a lemonade, but accidentally knocked over the sculpture Attila had been building for the past five hours. "Sorry," said Skipper. Atilla lost his patience and lopped of Skipper's right arm and ate it for dinner. Of course, Skipper proceeded to pass out.
When Skipper awoke, he saw that his arm had begun to grow back. Unfortunately, the stump was forming into three new arms. He also did not recognize where he was.
It looked like the desert. He was lying next to a campfire.