Eleven-year-old Emery Howard endured a deep drop into a well after leaping onto a faulty board at a vacant house in Greenville, N.C.

He and 12-year-old Larry Lindsey had become friends as soon as they moved in two doors away from each other in the Greer area. They often played in the area or strolled to a nearby store, but on Tuesday they made their way to a vacant house at the intersection of State 101 and Flews Chapel Road.

They knocked on the doorway and peered through the windows of a house where no one had dwelled for some time, authorities later said. The Greenville Country Sherriff said: "the boys hopped up on a back covered porch, noticed a rectangular board on the floor and began to jump on it."

While the 12-year-old Larry watched in horror, the board gave way and his friend dropped into an abyss about 150 feet deep, where a vintage well lay hidden underneath the porch. Shocked, Larry shouted into the dark aperture and amazingly, heard Emery yell back.

The boy ran to a dwelling over the intersection where a neighbor called 911 then brought a cord to the well and let down it down, but it was not long enough. Sherrif's Leutinent Tim Ridgeway said that the boy remained attentive during the whole ordeal and told rescuers that his arm was badly injured. The young man stood in water up to his shoulders for almost two hours.

"At that point, due to temperature and the strain and stress on the fireman as he had to wait and re-rope and so forth up above him, he got numb, it got a little narrower down there and he couldn't maneuver his arms to bend over and get to the harness to get to the boy. But he could see him and talk to him," Ridgeway said.